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THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 


The  Good  Neighbor 


FIFTH    EDITION 


Russell  Sage  Foundation 
Publication 


The   Good  Neighbor 

in  the  Modern  City 


Mary  E.  Richmond 

Author  of  "  Friendly  Visiting  Among  the  Poor,"  General 

Secretary  of  the  Philadelphia  Society  for 

Organizing  Charity 


Philadelphia  and  London 

J.  B.   Lippincott    Company 
1911 


Copyright,  1907 

Bt   J.  B.  LiPPlNCOTT    COMPAKT 


Publitbed  November,  1907. 


Printid  by 
J.  B.  Lijipincoti   Company,  Philadtiphia,  U-  S.  A. 


e 


THIS  little  book  was  begun  last  summer  in  the 
mountains,  where  I  had  the  encouragement 
and  daily  companionship  of  the  best  neighbor  I 
have  ever  known.  But  before  two  chapters  had 
been  written,  God  called  her,  up  there  among  the 
hills.  The  whole  is  now  dedicated,  most  lovingly, 
to  her  memory. 

Philadelphia,  November  I,  1907. 


773G03 


AND  behold,  a  certain  lawyer  stood  up  and  tempted 
him,  saying.  Master,  what  shall  I  do  to  inherit  eternal 
life?  And  he  said  unto  him.  What  is  written  in  the  law? 
how  readest  thou  ?  And  he  answering  said.  Thou  shall  love 
the  Lord  thy  God  with  all  thy  heart,  and  with  all  thy  soul, 
and  with  all  thy  strength,  and  with  all  thy  mind;  and  thy 
neighbor  as  thyself.  And  he  said  unto  him,  Thou  hast  an- 
swered right:  this  do,  and  thou  shall  live.  But  he,  desiring 
to  justify  himself,  said  unto  Jesus,  And  who  is  my  neighbor? 
Jesus  made  answer  and  said: 

A  certain  man  was  going  down  from  Jerusalem  to 
Jericho;  and  he  fell  among  robbers,  which  both  stripped  him 
and  beat  him,  and  departed,  leaving  him  half  dead.  And 
by  chance  a  certain  priest  was  going  do7vn  that  way :  and 
when  he  saw  him  he  passed  by  on  the  other  side.  And  in  like 
manner  a  Levite  also,  when  he  came  to  the  place,  and  saw 
him,  passed  by  on  the  other  side.  But  a  certain  Samaritan, 
as  he  Journeyed,  came  where  he  7vas:  and  7vhen  he  saw  him, 
he  was  moved  with  compassion,  and  came  to  him,  and  bound 
up  his  wounds,  pouring  on  them  oil  and  wine;  and  he  set 
him  on  his  own  beast,  and  brought  him  to  an  inn,  and  took 
care  of  him.  And  on  the  morrow  he  took  out  two  pence,  and 
gave  them  to  the  host,  and  said.  Take  care  of  him;  and 
whatsoever  thou  spendest  more,  I,  when  I  come  back  again, 
will  repay  thee.  IVhich  of  these  three,  thinkest  thou,  proved 
neighbor  unto  him  that  fell  among  the  robbers?  And  he 
said,  Ife  that  shewed  mercy  on  him.  And  Jesus  said  unto 
him,  Co,  and  do  thou  likewise. 


Contents 
I 

PAGE 

Introduction 1 3 

The  relation  of  modem  charity  to  the  parable  of 
the  Good  Samaritan.  Income-altruism  "versus  ser- 
vice-altruism. Prevention  and  cure.  Purpose  of 
this  book  to  describe  the  uses  of  the  modern  agencies 
that  are  the  successors  of  the  innkeeper  in  the 
parable.  Some  modem  difficulties  :  Stratification 
by  income,  indifference  to  neighborly  contacts  due 
to  overcrowding,  the  clash  of  standards.  The 
remedy  of  Christ. 

II 
The  Child  in  the  City 28 

Childhood's  losses  in  the  last  fifty  years.  Com- 
pensations for  these  losses  not  evenly  divided  between 
rich  and  poor  children  in  a  badly  governed  city. 
What  will  make  the  city  a  fit  place  for  all  children 
to  grow  up  in  ?  Their  homes  shape  them  for  better 
or  worse.  Short  cuts,  like  school  feeding,  of  no 
avail ;  their  real  needs  must  be  met  by  real  remedies 
in  the  home.  The  city  streets  must  be  made  fit 
places  for  children  to  play  in.  The  playground 
movement.  Condition  of  the  schools  a  fair  test  of 
neighborliness.  More  exceptional  needs:  Neglected, 
defective,  wayward  and  dependent  children. 


Ill 

PACE 

The  Child  at  Work 44 

A  millionaire's  recollections  of  his  industrial  start. 
The  city  child's  industrial  chances  now.  Children 
of  parents  who  could  forego  earnings.  Children  of 
widows.  The  factory  versus  the  street.  Indifferent 
inspectors.  Educational  tests  for  foreign  children. 
What  can  each  one  do  to  help  in  the  child  labor 
campaign  ?  Children  who  are  working  legally. 
Choice  of  work.  Evening  classes.  Extra  schooling 
for  exceptional  children. 

IV 
The  Adult  Worker 54 

We  influence  the  lives  of  workers  by  our  choice 
of  goods.  Capricious  expenditure.  The  craze  for 
cheapness.  Legitimate  bargains.  Equalizing  work 
and  wages  throughout  the  year.  Good  eflPects  of 
planning  ahead.  The  Consumers'  League  pro- 
gramme. The  sweating  system.  Relief  in  aid  of 
wages.  Hours  of  women  workers.  The  industrial 
handicap  of  race  and  national  prejudice. 

V 
The  Tenant 66 

The  old  nurse  and  the  model  cottage.  Absentee 
landlords.  New  York's  housing  reforms.  The 
city  that  is  supposed  to  have  no  tenements.  What 
is  a  tenement .''  Bad  features  of  the  house  built  for 
one  family  but  occupied  by  many.  The  alley  house. 
Causes  of  overcrowding.  Experiences  of  a  charity 
as  tenant.  Every  landlord  should  see  his  properties 
in  poor  neighborhoods  with  his  own  eyes.  What 
to  look  for.      Volunteer  rent-collecting. 


VI 

PAGB 

The  Man  on  the  Street 79 

"Worthy  "and  "unworthy."  Phillips  Brooks 
on  giving.  Less  than  one-tenth  of  those  who  need 
charitable  consideration  are  beggars  or  yagrants,  but 
these  are  ten  times  as  much  in  evidence.  What  of 
the  man  who  has  slipped  from  under .'  The  va- 
grant needs  more  help  than  he  gets.  The  three 
stages  of  helping,  (i)  money,  (2)  more  ennobling 
circumstances,  (  3  )  character.  We  wrong  any  man 
when  we  make  it  possible  for  him  to  live  without 
human  ties  and  without  occupation.  Work-tests 
and  shelters.  The  servant  girl  helps  or  hinders. 
Resident  beggars.  The  deformed.  Begging  letter- 
writers.  Child  beggars.  The  case  we  know  all 
about. 

VII 

The  Family  in  Distress 97 

The  village,  town  and  city  periods  of  relief. 
The  district  plan  ;  four  indispensable  features. 
Qualities  of  the  trained  charity  worker ;  of  the 
friendly  visitor.  Experiences  of  visitors.  Relation 
of  this  individual  work  to  the  prevention  of  distress 
and  to  social  betterment. 

VIII 

The  Invalid 113 

Advances  of  modern  medicine.  But  the  inhabi- 
tants of  our  courts  and  alleys  still  lie  wounded  in  the 
wilderness  of  Judea.  Ways  of  helping.  Tlie  cru- 
sade against  tuberculosis.  The  health  side  of  other 
evils  that  beset  our  neighbors. 


IX 

PAGB 

The  Contributor 123 

Does  the  new  charity  discourage  giving  ?  Indi- 
vidual giving.  Appeals  from  charities.  What 
should  the  contributor  know  before  he  contributes  ? 
Commercial  reporting  agencies.  Charities  can  be 
greatly  improved  by  the  contributor's  attitude.  The 
question  of  salaries.  Cost  of  administration,  service 
and  relief.  Example  of  service  "versus  relief.  Every 
new  form  of  philanthropy  has  its  fraudulent  imi- 
tations. Self-appointed  missionaries.  Professional 
promoters.  The  making  of  wills.  The  frequent 
revision  of  lists  of  annual  contributions. 


The  Church   Member 139 

The  clergyman  who  makes  the  city  his  work- 
shop. A  different  church  situation — we  cannot  win 
Heaven  by  making  other  human  beings  less  human. 
Relation  between  the  church  and  secular  charities  ; 
the  church  supplies  the  motive,  the  charities  supply 
the  method.  Charity  is  forever  exploring,  annexing 
and  relinquishing.  In  the  church  itself,  though 
upon  a  far  grander  scale,  we  discover  this  same 
process.  What  of  the  relinquished  activities  of 
medicine,  statecraft,  education  ?  Their  greatest  lack 
is  spiritual  power.  This  is  the  lack  of  charity  also, 
which  the  church  must  supply. 


The  Good   Neighbor 

in  the  Modern  City 


I 

Introduction. 

A  CLERGYMAN  who  was  on  his  way  to 

-^  ^  address  the  annual  meeting  of  a  large 
modern  charity  was  warned  by  one  of  his 
parishioners  that  he  had  better  not  mention 
there  the   parable  of  the  Good  Samaritan. 

He  retorted  pertinently  that  we  were  now 
living  in  an  age  when  there  were  wounded  trav- 
ellers at  every  turning  of  the  way,  and  still 
others  hidden  from  our  sight  so  sorely  stricken 
that  we  should  organize  search  parties  to  seek 
them  out.  The  situation  was  further  complicated 
by  the  fact  that  there  were  also  prominently  in 
view,  to  excite  our  pity,  those  who  only  pre- 
tended to  be  wounded  and  whose  needs  were 

»3 


14  The  Good  Neighbor 

not  oil  and  wine,  transportation  and  shelter,  but 
a  renewed  zest  for  work  and  for  self-help.  Under 
these  changed  conditions  we  must  still  follow  the 
spirit  of  the  Samaritan's  ministry,  he  main- 
tained, if  we  would  achieve  the  same  neighborly 
result;  but  we  must  have  more  innkeepers, 
each  one  doing  his  special  work,  if  all  the  real 
wounds  were  to  be  adequately  cared  for. 

The  charitable  society  whose  activities  were 
thus  defended  fell  far  short  of  the  standard 
of  conduct  given  us  for  all  time  in  the  parable, 
but  still  it  had  striven  honestly  to  find  the  wounds 
of  modern  society  and  to  heal  them.  It  was 
then  trying  to  secure  a  compulsory  education 
law  in  a  State  that  had  none;  it  was  instru- 
mental later  in  getting  little  children  out  of  the 
canneries  and  the  textile  mills  and  making 
their  premature  employment  illegal;  it  is  now 
trying  to  make  its  own  bit  of  road  safer  for 
future  travellers  by  bringing  to  light  city  hous- 
ing conditions  that  maim  the  poorer  class  of 
tenants.  Hundreds  of  men  and  women  with  an 
impulse  to  be  neighborly  had  learned,  on  its  dis- 
trict committees,  to  become  friendly  visitors  to 
families  in  distress,  to  master  the  more  complex 


Introduction  15 

system  of  inns  and  innkeepers  made  necessary 
by  our  more  complex  life,  to  know  the  modern 
equivalents  for  oil  and  wine,  and  they  had  car- 
ried this  knowledge,  this  daily  habit  of  service, 
back  into  their  church  work  and  their  homes. 

But  the  parishioner  was  a  literally-minded 
man.  He  was  unable  to  grasp  the  relation 
between  a  legislative  committee  and  the  older, 
simpler  expression  of  neighborliness;  he  was 
shocked,  moreover,  by  the  society's  known 
objection  to  the  giving  of  small  change  to  beg- 
gars on  the  street.  The  clergyman,  on  the 
other  hand,  used  the  society  as  the  Samaritan 
used  the  innkeeper.  He  recognized  that  it 
was  able  to  do  certain  things  that  his  own 
duties  would  not  permit  him  to  do  continu- 
ously, and  yet  he  never  made  the  mistake  of 
throwing  the  whole  task  on  an  organization, 
believing  as  he  did  with  all  his  heart  that  the 
ministry  of  life  was  a  part  of  the  ministry  of 
religion.  What  he  could  do  well  himself  he 
did  with  that  humane  touch  which  is  the  high- 
est instrument  of  healing  and  then,  turning  to 
his  organized  ally,  "Whatsoever  thou  spendest 
more,  I,  when  I  come  back  again,  will  repay 


i6  The  Good  Neighbor 

thee."  The  society  was  only  a  modern  con- 
venience; it  was  dependent  upon  the  spirit 
of  service  that  he  and  such  as  he  poured  into  it. 
Stunfr;,  perhaps,  by  such  unjust  criticism  as 
that  of  the  parishioner,  our  modern  innkeepers 
are  too  apt  to  undervalue  personal  and  un- 
organized service.  They  are  too  likely  to  make 
such  statements  as  the  following  from  Pro- 
fessor Patten's  very  suggestive  and  interesting 
book  on  "The  New  Basis  of  Civilization." 
Speaking  of  what  he  calls  service-altruism,  the 
charity  of  personal  contact,  and  of  income- 
altruism,  the  charity  which  makes  gifts  of  money 
"for  public  and  far-reaching  ends,"  he  says, 

The  difFerence  is  that  which  separates  the  old 
from  the  new  charity.  The  one  crossed  the  road 
to  help  the  Samaritan  (f?V)  after  he  had  suiFered 
under  bad  conditions  of  highway  management ; 
the  other  patrols  the  road  and  arrests  the  wayside 
thieves  before  the  traveller  falls  among  them. 
Service-altruism  binds  the  wounds,  breathes  for- 
giveness, and  solaces  the  victims  of  recurring 
disasters  without  attacking  their  causes.  Income- 
altruism  hews  to  their  base,  for  it  has  the  money 
power  to  police  and  to  light  the  road  to  Jericho. 


Introduction  17 

Money  power  is  here  given  as  the  distin- 
guishing characteristic  of  effective  charity. 
Income-altruism  is  indeed  needed,  but  without 
a  strong  infusion  of  the  service-altruism  of 
which  Professor  Patten  speaks  slightingly,  it 
never  kept  anything  policed  and  lighted,  never 
"hewed  to  the  base"  since  the  world  began, 
and  never  will.  Policing  happens  to  be  a  par- 
ticularly unfortunate  illustration  of  income-altru- 
ism's power,  for  combinations  between  police 
and  robbers  are  not  unknown.  Money  is  a  bad 
master  but  a  good  servant;  it  supplemented 
the  neighborly  service  of  the  Samaritan  in  the 
parable,  but  was  no  substitute  for  it.  And  lack- 
ing his  spirit  to-day,  we  may  spend  money  like 
water  in  our  campaigns  of  prevention,  and  still 
make  little  headway. 

Another  common  mistake  made  by  those  who 
write  upon  social  questions  in  these  days  is  to 
assume  that  "cure"  and  "prevention"  are 
opposed  to  one  another,  and  that  prevention 
cannot  get  its  just  due  until  we  spend  less  time 
in  curing  the  ills  of  individuals.  Never  was 
theie  a  more  mischievous  social  fallacy!  Pre- 
vention and  cure  must  go  hand  in  hand      In 


i8  The  Good  Neighbor 

winning  for  the  present  generation  of  con- 
sumptives, for  instance,  the  kindest  and  most 
adequate  care,  we  are  cutting  out  many  centers 
of  contagion  and  at  the  same  time  educating 
the  pubHc  as  to  the  true  means  of  prevention. 
This  has  been  the  method  of  modern  medicine 
and  it  may  well  be,  in  future,  the  method  of 
modern  charity.  In  the  office  of  the  country 
practitioner,  in  the  crowded  wards  of  city  hos- 
pitals, and  on  the  field  of  battle,  medicine  has 
sought  and  found,  while  pushing  hard  toward 
cure,  the  blessed  means  of  prevention. 

The  means  of  cure  and  prevention  are  not 
far  from  each  one  of  us,  nor  does  their  use 
demand  a  great  expenditure  of  time  and  effort. 
Each  one,  by  taking  a  little  thought,  can  do 
more  than  might  at  first  appear  without  becom- 
ing either  a  trained  expert  or  an  income-altru- 
ist, and  his  service  will  weigh  double  when  it 
is  done,  not  in  the  patronizing  spirit  of  the 
benefactor,  but  in  the  democratic  spirit  of 
the  good  neighbor.  But  the  parishioner  quoted 
as  objecting  to  our  new-fangled  methods  is 
not  the  only  one  who  is  confused  by  modern 
substitutions;   he  is  not  alone  in  failing  to  real- 


Introduction  19 

ize  that,  when  circumstances  change,  methods 
must  be  modified,  or  else  the  result  will  be 
different  and  not  so  good. 

Believing,  as  I  do,  that  a  wider  recognition 
among  charitable  people  of  this  need  for  modi- 
fied methods  in  our  dealing  with  poverty  and 
its  causes  must  precede  any  great  social  ad- 
vance, I  have  set  myself  the  task  in  this  little 
book  of  trying  to  describe  in  a  simple,  straight- 
forvv'ard  way  and,  if  possible,  without  techni- 
calities, the  various  ways  in  which  modern 
Samaritans  may  use  the  inns  and  innkeepers 
of  today  in  assisting  those  who  have  fallen 
among  thieves.  There  are  many  things  that 
the  good  neighbor  cannot  safely  leave  to  any 
agency,  and  this  conviction,  which  I  hold  very 
firmly,  would  seem  to  be  my  chief  qualification 
for  the  present  undertaking. 

But  one  who  attempted  the  larger  task  of 
interpreting  neighborliness  in  all  its  aspects  as 
affected  by  modern  city  conditions  and  not 
merely  in  its  relation  to  poverty  would  encounter 
many  difficulties  that  I  escape.  The  relations 
of  employer  and  employee,  of  the  prosperous 
to  the  somewhat  less  prosperous  who  are  their 


20  The  Good  Neighbor 

social  competitors,  the  antagonisms  of  blood 
relationship,  of  creed,  of  race  prejudice — these 
and  other  aspects  of  neighborliness  I  deliber- 
ately turn  my  back  upon.  And  still  the  task 
remaining  is  more  than  formidable,  for  the 
poor  are  not  a  class  apart  with  different  char- 
acteristics, and  any  brief  discussion  of  poverty 
and  its  treatment  must  seem  to  set  them  apart, 
must  seem  to  emphasize  unduly  a  bad  modern 
tendency. 

As  I  go  in  and  out  of  the  homes  of  those  of 
my  friends  who  are  not  necessarily  well-to-do 
but  who  are  at  least  in  no  danger  of  want,  I 
cannot  avoid  noticing  how  cut  off  they  seem 
from  association  with  any  but  their  own  sort  of 
people.  Their  fathers  and  mothers  came  in 
daily  contact  as  a  matter  of  course  with  many 
kinds  of  people.  Unconsciously  but  very  rap- 
idly the  children  have  been  slipping  away  from 
this  varied  social  experience,  in  which  rich  and 
poor,  landlord  and  tenant,  employer  and  work- 
man, purchaser  and  tradesman,  dwelt  together 
"in  visible  relationship;"  they  now  live  in  a 
stratified    world,    where    their    social    relations 


Introduction  21 

are   sadly   impoverished.     The   trolley-car,   the 
suburban  train,  the  telephone,  and  the  reorgani- 
zation of  our  methods  of  production  and  dis- 
tribution,  have  changed  the   habits  of  human 
intercourse,  and  what  Mr.  Wells  says  of  London 
is  equally  true  in  this  country:     'Our  people 
have  overflowed  their  containing  locality;    they 
live  in  one  area,  they  work  in  another,  and  they 
go  to  shop  in    a  third.     And  the  only  way  in 
which  you  can  localize  them  again  is  to  expand 
your  areas  to  their  new  scale."    This  was  writ- 
ten of  the   areas  of  municipal   administration, 
but  it  applies  quite  as  well  to  a  larger  neighbor- 
liness.     Those  who  ride  live  in  a  larger  neigh- 
borhood than  those  who  travel  afoot,  and  those 
who    ride    by    rail    or    by   electricity   can    have 
larger    community    interests    than    those    who 
ride  behind  horses,   but  this   is  such  a  recent 
expansion   of  opportunity   that   life   has    been, 
for  the  moment,  narrowed  thereby. 

Things — intervening  and  ever-multiplying 
things — are  keeping  us  monstrously  busy  with 
the  surface.  We  do  not  read  or  crave  so  much 
poetry;  material  comforts  are  choking  within 
us  the  very  springs  of  sympathy  and  compas- 


22  The  Good  Neighbor 

sion.  The  trolley  and  the  train  carry  us  away 
from  the  sights  and  sounds  associated  with 
distress,  and  we  have  not  discovered  that  the 
lines  travel  both  ways,  that  it  is  easier  than  ever 
to  seek  out  the  distressed  and  to  succor  them. 

Civilization  drops  every  now  and  then  some 
necessary  part  of  its  luggage  in  this  way  and 
has  to  travel  back  to  pick  it  up — an  awkward 
process,  or  one  that  always  seems  so  to  the  on- 
looker. We  have  had  so  many  houses  that  we 
have  been  forced  to  rediscover  fresh  air,  and  so 
many  cooked  dishes  that  we  have  been  forced 
to  rediscover  milk  and  eggs.  How  clumsily  we 
have  been  doing  this  anyone  who  knows  the 
details  of  the  crusade  against  tuberculosis  can 
testify.  And  now  social  contact  with  all  sorts 
and  conditions  of  men — a  thing  so  necessary 
to  our  social  health  and  sanity — this  lost  pack- 
age also  we  are  recovering,  but  very  clumsily. 

The  most  obvious  remedy  for  this  predica- 
ment is  to  seek  opportunities  for  better  ac- 
quaintance and  greater  helpfulness  in  our 
natural  relations  with  the  poor,  but  the  diffi- 
culty is  that  too  often  no  such  relations  exist. 
Let  anyone  think  over  the  list  of  his  acquaint- 


Introduction  23 

ances,  the  young  couples,  professional  people, 
who  live  in  the  suburbs;  the  solid  middle-aged 
people  who  have  a  town  house  and  a  country 
house;  their  son  back  from  the  technical  school 
who  has  views  about  civics  and  about  sports; 
their  daughter  who  has  left  college  and  is 
beginning  to  find  society  a  bore,  or  else  who 
never  went  to  college  but  came  out  early  and  so 
is  growing  restless  and  dissatisfied.  They  have 
their  charities  and  their  clubs  and  their  "in- 
terests," but  are  they  not  for  the  most  part 
hopelessly  cut  off  from  real  contact  with  their 
fellows  and  with  the  main  stream  of  our  na- 
tional life  ?  The  only  poor  that  they  know  at 
all  are  the  parasites  who  seek  them  out,  and 
the  odd-jobs  people  who  are  still  in  some 
instances  employed  by  them  directly  and  not 
through    a    middleman. 

In  the  second  place  and  side  by  side  with 
this  development  of  suburban  life  and  of 
stratification  according  to  income,  we  have 
the  crowding  of  the  poorer  people  in  greater  and 
greater  density  into  our  city  streets  and  alleys. 
The  poor  cling  tenaciously  to  neighborly  tra- 
ditions,  but  when  the  degree  of  overcrowding 


24  The  Good  Neighbor 

in  a  city  block  passes  a  certain  point  the  same 
indifference  to  neighborly  contacts  of  which  I 
have  been  complaining  develops,  though  pro- 
duced now  by  directly  opposite  conditions.* 

And  still  a  third  condition  of  city  life  makes 
against  "that  sympathetic  understanding  which 
•^'one  knits  men  together. "  One  who  has  run 
counter  to  the  standard  of  a  small  community — 
it  may  be  in  some  rather  absurd  social  conven- 
tion— will  not  soon  forget  the  crushing  weight 
of  its  moral  condemnation.  Wherever  it  is  a 
clearly  defined  unit,  the  community  standard 
is  legislature,  judge,  jury  and  penitentiary  all  in 
one;  the  ordinary  processes  of  legal  enact- 
ment and  enforcement  seem  clumsy  by  compari- 
son. But  in  the  large  city  we  have  not  one  com- 
munity standard,  we  have  twenty,  each  com- 
peting for  recognition  with  all  the  others.  The 
least  successful  native  stock  and  foreign  stocks 
have  flocked  in,  bringing  their  own  standards  of 
living    with    them.       In    every    matter    which 


*See  for  the  development  of  this  idea  "The  Practice  of 
Charity,"  by  Edward  T.  Devine,  p.  Zl,  sq.,  where  a  tenement 
dweller  tella  the  story  of  her  husband's  refusal  to  warn  the  sleeping 
inmates  of  a  burning  house  across  the  way. 


Introduction  25 

vitally  concerns  them  and  should  concern  us  as 
their  neighbors,  in  the  education  and  employ- 
ment of  children,  the  sanitation  of  streets  and 
houses,  the  making,  buying  and  selling  of 
goods,  we  have  this  clash  of  standards.  Hence 
our  more  frequent  appeal  to  legislatures,  and 
our  laborious  efforts  to  secure  the  enforce- 
ment of  beneficent  laws  that  are  imperfectly 
understood. 

But  to  face  these  difficulties  honestly  is  not  to 
despair.  "The  twenty-five  years  just  past," 
said  President  Eliot  at  the  besinnins  of  the  new 
century,  "  are  the  most  extraordinary  twenty- 
five  years  in  the  whole  history  of  our  race. 
Nothing  is  done  as  it  was  done  twenty-five 
years  ago."  Set  over  against  this  statement 
the  contrasting  fact  that  the  road  from  Jerusa- 
lem to  Jericho  is  still  unsafe,  that  robberies 
have  occurred  there  within  the  memory  of  men 
still  living,  and  we  get  some  conception  of  the 
difference  between  a  static  and  a  dynamic 
civilization.  Into  our  dealings  with  the  evils  of 
a  dynamic  civilization  bring  once  more  the  rem- 
edy of  Christ,  the  remedy  of  a  larger  neighbor- 
liness,  and  the  next  twenty-five  years  would  be 


26  The  Good  Neighbor 

as  wonderful  spiritually  as  the  last  twenty-five 
have  been  materially.  To  quote  Professor 
Shaler, 

It  is  evident  that  while  Christ  set  his  face 
against  all  the  sins  of  the  flesh.  He  above  all  op- 
posed the  motive  of  tribal  pride  and  hatred.  .  .  . 
He  saw  straight  to  the  center  of  the  ills  that 
beset  mankind  ;  saw  that  they  lay  in  the  lack  of 
friendliness  for  the  neighbor  of  every  estate.  He 
sought  the  cure  where  we  have  to  seek  it,  in  the 
conviction  that  whatever  be  the  differences  be- 
tween men,  they  are  trifling  compared  with  the 
identities  which  should  unite  them  in  universal 
brotherhood. 

Turning  to  the  details  of  our  subject,  we  have 
now  to  consider  the  bad  conditions  and  reme- 
dial agencies  that  surround  some  of  our  poorer 
neighbors,  including  the  city  children  at  play, 
at  school,  at  work,  at  home  and  in  the  city 
streets;  men  and  women  who  make  the  goods 
we  buy;  tenants  who  live  in  the  houses  we 
build  and  rent;  men  without  homes  who  stop 
us  on  the  street;  families  that  have  been  wors- 
ted in  life's  struggle  by  accident  or  death;    and 


Introduction  27 

the  sick  who  should  have  been  strong  and  well. 
Last  of  all,  the  good  neighbor  himself  will  con- 
cern us,  first  as  a  contributor  to  diverse  good 
causes,  then  as  a  member  of  some  church 
pledged  to  hasten  the  coming  of  Christ's  King- 
dom upon  earth.  What  untoward  conditions 
that  surround  the  lives  of  these  city  dwellers  is 
he  in  a  position  to  remove  ?  What  agencies 
exist  to  help  him,  and  how  can  he  most  con- 
veniently and  effectively  use  them  ? 

As  a  practical  help,  a  number  of  blank  pages 
have  been  provided  at  the  end  of  this  book  for 
the  addresses,  telephone  numbers  and  office 
hours  of  those  specific  local  agencies  which 
correspond  most  closely  to  the  charities  re- 
ferred to  in  general  terms  in  its  pages.  The 
local  charity  organization  society  or  associated 
charities  will  always  take  pleasure  in  providing 
these  addresses  upon  application. 


II 

The  Child  in  the  City. 

A  RECENT  writer  estimates  that  seven  new 
•^  •*■  citizens  are  born  into  the  EngHsh-speaking 
world  every  minute,  and  he  declares  that  the 
chief  business  of  every  statesman,  every  social 
organizer,  every  philanthropist  and  every  mati 
should  be  to  see  that  the  world  does  its  best 
for  these  newcomers. 

"Doing  its  best"  means  different  things  at 
different  stages  of  the  world's  development. 
Formerly  the  town  council  did  its  best  when  it 
permitted  the  streets  to  follow  the  ancient  cow- 
paths,  but  now,  if  the  council  is  wise,  it  employs 
such  experts  as  Olmsted  and  Robinson  to  pro- 
vide plans  of  municipal  improvement  for  the 
next  fifty  years.  There  is  a  wonderful  amount 
of  good  child-saving  work  being  done  in  our 
cities,  but  too  much  of  it  just  happens  like  the 
ancient    paths. 

Part  of  the  difficulty  lies  with  those  of  us  who 
wish  sincerely  to  be  good  neighbors.     We  are 

28 


The  Child  in  the  City  '  29 

not  only  hampered  by  our  imperfect  recollec- 
tion of  what  it  means  to  be  little  and  young, 
but  by  our  failure  to  understand  the  great 
changes  in  living  conditions  in  the  city  since 
we  ourselves  grew  up  in  it.  Childhood's  losses 
in  the  last  fifty  years  are  very  imperfectly  rea- 
lized. Many  processes  formerly  carried  on  in 
the  home  that  were  both  work  and  play,  that 
were  full  of  dramatic  incident  and  educational 
interest  for  the  children  of  the  household,  are 
now  hidden  away  in  shops  and  factories.  As 
we  shall  see  later,  the  shops  and  factories  them- 
selves cannot  make  up  to  the  child  what  he  has 
lost;  there  is  no  opportunity  for  him  in  the  gas 
works  or  in  the  woollen,  flour  or  saw  mill,  that 
can  even  partially  compensate  for  the  whole 
process  of  our  domestic  industries.* 

A  generation  ago  we  may  not  have  followed 
this  whole  process  from  the  trying  of  fats  to  the 
dipping  of  the  candle,  from  the  raising  and  shear- 
ing of  sheep  to  the  plying  of  the  loom,  from 
the  grinding  of  grains  to  the  baking  of  the  loaf. 


*See  "The  School  and  Society,"  by  John  Dewey,  to  whom 
social  workers  are  indebted  for  a  saner  view  of  this  subject. 


30  The  Good  Neighbor 

but  we  were  much  nearer  to  it  than  we  are  to- 
day. Our  chances  of  being  country  bred,  more- 
over, were  two  and  a  half  times  as  great  as  they 
are  now  ;  the  birds  of  the  air,  the  beasts  of  the 
field,  and  the  fields  themselves,  were  two  and  a 
half  times  as  likely  to  have  assisted  in  our  educa- 
tion, and  we  were  not  half  as  liable  to  arrest  for 
playing  in  the  streets  in  an  effort  to  make  up  for 
their  loss.  Pure  milk  and  pure  air,  unadulterated 
foods,  physical  exercise,  early  hours  of  rest — 
all  of  these  good  things  were  more  likely  to 
contribute  to  our  growth,  and  we  were  saved 
from  the  feverish,  unwholesome  excitements — 
the  moving  pictures,  low  theatres  and  gambling 
schemes — that  lie  in  wait  to-day  at  every  turn 
for  the  pennies  of  the  city  child. 

There  are  many  compensations  for  these 
losses  of  the  child  in  the  city,  and  there  might  be 
many  more;  but  the  compensations  are  not 
evenly  divided  in  a  place  that  is  badly  governed. 
In  a  badly  governed  city  the  losses  fall  with 
crushing  weight  upon  the  children  of  the  poor, 
while  the  children  of  the  well-to-do  are  bought 
off,  as  is  were,  from  the  more  obvious  effects  ot 
mal-administration.      If  the   city's   schools   are 


The  Child  in  the  City  31 

ill-taught  and  ill-ventilated,  the  well-to-do  send 
their  children  to  private  schools;  if  the  street*; 
are  unclean,  the  drainage  bad,  the  water  im- 
pure, they  take  them  away  for  a  number  of 
months  in  each  year,  and  put  expensive  filters 
in  their  city  homes  or  else  buy  spring  water;  if 
the  police  department  is  inefficient,  they  hire  a 
private  watchman;  if  vice  pays  tribute  for  pro- 
tection, it  is  at  least  not  permitted  to  show  its 
head  in  the  better  residence  neighborhoods. 

But  children  are  going  to  continue  to  grow 
up  in  cities  in  larger  and  larger  numbers;  in- 
stead of  denouncing  the  city  and  all  its  ways, 
therefore,  it  would  seem  to  be  the  part  of  neigh- 
borliness  to  begin  at  once  to  make  it  a  fit  place 
for  all  children,  including  the  children  of  the 
poorest,  to  grow  up  in,  and  to  do  this  in  no 
spasmodic,  panicky  way,  but  steadily  and  per- 
sistently. We  know  approximately  what  needs 
to  be  done,  but  those  who  have  most  influence 
do  not  feel  the  pressure  of  this  need,  and  are  not 
imaginative  enough  to  realize  vividly  the  needs 
of  their  neighbors. 

Aside  from  the  church,  whose  influence  will 
be   considered    later,    the   social    agencies    that 


32  The  Good  Neighbor 

have  most  to  do  with  shaping  the  normal  city 
child,  the  child  with  both  parents  and  all  his 
faculties,  are  the  family,  the  street,  the  school,  the 
workshop,  the  bureau  of  health  and  the  police. 
Work  and  health  I  reserve  for  separate  chapters. 

The  best  and  most  ancient  institution  for  the 
care  and  education  of  children  is  the  family. 
I  am  in  entire  sympathy  with  those  who  hold 
that  changes  in  modern  industry  and  the  re- 
moval of  many  industrial  processes  from  the 
home  make  a  reorganization  of  the  school 
necessary.  It  is  indeed  imperatively  necessary 
that  we  give  industrial  training  a  more  promi- 
nent place  in  our  school  system  and  that  we 
lengthen  the  period  of  school  attendance.  But 
the  habit  of  changing  things  may  become  a 
fever,  and  in  the  hurry  to  readjust  these  rela- 
tions of  home,  school  and  workshop  to  the  life 
of  the  child,  there  is  danger  at  the  moment  that 
the  home  may  suffer — I  had  almost  written 
irreparable  loss,  but  the  institution  of  the  fam- 
ily has  survived  very  formidable  foes.  We  may 
encourage  women  to  leave  their  homes  and 
their  children  for  the  factory;    we  may  extend 


The  Child  in  the  City  33 

our  day  nurseries  beyond  their  legitimate  use  as 
shelters  for  the  children  of  those  widows  or 
those  wives  of  disabled  men  who  cannot  pos- 
sibly remain  at  home  during  the  day,  and  re- 
ceive in  these  nurseries  any  child  whose  mother 
wishes  to  be  relieved  of  home  cares;  we  may 
develop  a  hundred  agencies  for  providing  chil- 
dren with  the  necessaries  of  life,  as  our  ideas 
about  necessities  expand;  but,  sooner  or  later, 
we  shall  rediscover  the  old  truth  that  we  cannot 
save  the  children  without  saving  the  homes 
that  shape  them  finally  for  better  or  for  worse. 
So  long  as  family  life  continues,  both  the 
quantity  and  quality  of  that  life  will  be  con- 
trolled far  more  from  within  than  from  without. 
In  the  desire  to  get  good  results  quickly  we  may 
repeatedly  ignore  this,  though,  if  we  believe 
sincerely  in  the  neighborly,  one-by-one  way  of 
helping,  in  the  retail  method  of  reform,  we  shall 
not  be  daunted  by  the  check  that  must  come 
inevitably  to  each  wholesale  movement  in  turn 
as  it  touches  this  most  fundamental  fact  01 
family  life.  But  things  that  can  never  be  ac- 
complished outside  the  family  by  measures  the 
kindest  and  best  intentioned,  can  be  accom- 
3 


34  The  Good  Neighbor 

plished  inside  the  family  by  contact,  by  per- 
suasion, by  neighborly  help  and  by  sympathy. 
To  bring  back  to  each  home  a  new  sense  of  the 
child's  needs,  to  lift  the  standard  of  the  whole 
family  slowly  but  steadily  as  regards  defective 
vision,  hearing,  breathing,  speech  and  nutri- 
tion, will  be  more  effectual  in  the  long  run  than 
any  of  the  short  cuts  (to  take  two  recent  in- 
stances) for  providing  oculists  and  spectacles 
free,  or  for  providing  meals  free  to  school 
children  without  regard  to  the  responsibilities 
of  parents  or  their  ability  to  meet  them. 

If  the  wage -earner  cannot  afFord  to  buy  glasses 
for  his  child,  does  not  something  need  readjusting 
beside  the  vision  of  the  scholar  ?  How  regularly 
would  spectacles  freely  provided  be  used  ?  How 
long  would  they  remain  unbroken  ?  Why  should 
spectacles  be  provided  for  all  children  when  dis- 
pensaries and  other  agencies  can  provide  them 
for  the  relatively  few  children  whose  parents  are 
unable  to  do  so  ? 

If  a  child  comes  to  school  looking  underfed, 
the  promptest  and  easiest  remedy  is  undoubtedly 
a  school  lunch,  but  what  if  the  anaemia  persists  ? 
What  if  the  child  gets  the  wrong  things  or  noth- 


The  Child  in  the  City  35 

ing  at  all  for  breakfast  and  supper  ?  What  if  we 
make  it  still  easier  for  the  woman  as  well  as  the 
man  of  the  family  to  be  away  all  day  and  leave 
all  the  children,  including  those  below  school 
age,  unmothered  ?  Does  the  lunch  meet  these 
other  needs  or  does  it  only  delay  the  meeting  of 
them  a  litde  longer  ?  *  Surely  the  only  way  of 
dealing  with  the  real  needs  of  school  children  is 
by  real  remedies,  such  as  those  adopted  by  the 
New  York  Committee  on  the  Physical  Welfare  of 
School  Children,  which  sends  visiting  cooks  into 
che  homes  of  children  apparently  ill-fed,  and 
wins  the  co-operation  of  the  mother  in  devising 
better  ways  of  buying  and  preparing  food,  or, 
where  the  income  is  insufficient,  seeks  through 
the  allied  Association  for  Improving  the  Con- 
dition of  the  Poor  the  means  of  supplementing 
it.  In  several  cities  the  experiment  is  being 
tried  of  a  paid  school  visitor,  one  who  has  been 
trained  for  social  work  and  whose  duty  it  is  to 
act  as  intermediary  between  the  school  with 
which  she  is  affiliated,  the  charities,  and  the 
homes  of  the  children. 


*See  Charitici  and  the  Commons,  Vol.  XVII,  p.  II04, 
•' School  Lunches  in  Milwaukee,''  by  Zilpha  D.  Smith;  and  the 
TaU  Rc-vinv,  Vol.  XV,  No.  3,  "  Feeding  of  School  Children," 
by  C.  S.  Loch. 


36  The  Good  Neighbor 

To  approach  any  relief  question  from  the 
point  of  view  of  the  child's  welfare  only  and  to 
consider  nothing  else,  is  a  natural  enough  mis- 
take to  make,  but  its  effect  upon  the  child's 
life  is  disastrous.  "It  seems  to  be  almost  in- 
evitable," says  Mrs.  Bosanquet,  "that  the  man 
who  accepts  a  subordinate  economic  position 
in  the  family  degenerates  into  a  loafer  and 
tyrant. "  We  may  hold  the  most  approved 
views  about  family  life,  and  still  be  actively 
engaged  in  breaking  it  up,  when  we  fail  to  treat 
all  questions  of  income  and  relief  as  the  affair 
first  of  the  head  of  the  family,  of  the  mother 
only  secondarily,  and  of  the  children  not  at  all. 
School  teachers  ignore  this  principle  when  they 
collect  clothing,  shoes  and  money  for  relief 
after  hearing  only  the  child's  account  of  the 
need  at  home;  church  and  Sunday  school 
workers  also  ignore  it  too  often  in  their  various 
relations  with  needy  families. 

The  same  principle  applies  to  other  things 
beside  relief.  A  New  England  pastor  who  used 
to  seek  eagerly  in  the  poorer  streets  of  his  town 
for  children  who  were  attending  no  Sunday 
school,  and  then  persuade  them  to  come  to  his, 


The  Child  in  the  City  37 

adopted  a  sounder  method  when  he  called  upon 
the  father  of  the  family  and  formally  asked  his 
permission  to  invite  the  children.  He  found 
that  this  little  act  of  thoughtfulness  helped  to 
revive  a  sense  of  responsibility  that  had  long 
remained  unappealed  to  in  the  midst  of  our 
bustling  benevolences.  And  w^hat  has  benevo- 
lence to  offer  in  exchange  for  family  affection, 
for  all  the  beauty  and  depth  of  it,  rooted  firmly 
as  it  is  in  the  sense  of  responsibility .? 

I  have  said  that  the  city  might  be  made  a 
much  safer  and  more  attractive  place  for  chil- 
dren to  grow  up  in.  What  might  each  one  do  to 
bring  this  about  ? 

In  the  first  place,  we  might,  instead  of  talk- 
ing so  persistently  about  the  importance  of 
keeping  them  off  the  streets,  talk  much  more 
about  the  importance  of  making  the  streets 
cleaner  places,  in  every  sense,  for  children  to 
run  about  in.  City  children  must  be  out  of 
doors  often  if  they  are  to  be  kept  healthy,  and 
the  city's  out-of-doors  should  be  well  enough 
policed,  lighted,  cleansed  and  protected  from 
illicit  traffics  of  all  sorts  to  be  a  fit  place  for  chil- 


38  The  Good  Neighbor 

dren  to  spend  a  part  of  each  day.  We  must 
provide  wholesome  amusements  in  plenty  and 
then  deal  rigidly  with  the  unwholesome  re- 
mainder. To  begin  at  the  other  end  is  to  ignore 
nature's  way  and  to  wage  a  losing  fight  against 
the  cheap  theaters  and  other  immoral  shows  to 
which  children  now  flock  in  great  numbers. 

The  playground  movement  for  providing  edu- 
cational and  well-organized  play  on  a  scale  as 
extensive  as  our  school  systems,  is  now  launched; 
and  no  one  thing,  if  it  receives  the  intelligent 
support  of  all  good  neighbors,  will  do  more  to 
make  the  city  a  better  place  for  children.  Not 
only  the  ignorant  and  careless  parent,  but  the 
good,  conscientious  one,  if  condemned  by  pov- 
erty to  a  poor  environment,  must  often  see  the 
more  active  and  masterful  of  his  children  go 
straight  to  the  bad  through  the  misdirection  of 
their  play  instincts.  Playgrounds,  recreation 
piers,  outdoor  and  indoor  gymnasia,  boys'  and 
girls'  clubs,  vacation  schools,  country  outings, 
school  and  home  gardens,  music  and  pictures 
and  outdoor  festivals — what  attractive  oppor- 
tunities all  of  these  offer  for  the  good  neighbor 
who  wishes   to   share   his   capacity   for   enjoy- 


The  Child  in  the  City  39 

ment!  Chicago  leads  at  present  with  an  aggre- 
gate annual  attendance  of  five  millions  in  her 
recreation  centers,  but  if  the  good  people  of  any 
city  could  only  realize  the  vital  relation  of 
healthful,  honest,  well-directed  play  to  citizen- 
ship, industrial  efficiency  and  morals,  this  figure 
would  soon  be  dwarfed. 

The  streets  and  the  schools  should  be  every- 
body's affair,  and  the  condition  of  the  schools 
— for  to  these  at  least  we  are  already  fully  com- 
mitted— would  be  a  very  fair  test  of  the  true 
neighborliness  of  a  community.  If  the  school 
houses  are  some  of  them  so  crowded  that  pupils 
can  be  given  only  half-time  instruction,  if  the 
buildings  are  ill-ventilated  and  unsanitary,  if 
the  teachers,  janitors  and  superintendents  are 
subjected  to  political  interference,  then  we  are 
letting  the  most  helpless  members  of  the  com- 
munity fall  among  thieves.  How  can  we,  as  a 
Christian  people,  hold  up  our  heads,  until  for 
the  sake  of  the  children  we  have  taken  the  de- 
partments of  education  and  of  health  in  our 
cities  out  of  politics  .' 

We  can  also  encourage  those  educators  who 
are  striving  to  secure  the  extension  of  indus- 


40  The  Good  Neighbor 

trial  training,  and  the  better  physical  care  of 
school  children  through  improved  school  build- 
ings, and  through  systematic  medical  inspec- 
tion; and  we  can  encourage  and  support  all 
citizens'  movements  for  the  betterment  of 
schools,  such  as  the  public  education  associa- 
tion and  the  parents'  association.  Without 
going  in  the  least  out  of  our  way,  we  can  aid 
the  school  authorities  by  reporting  to  the  com- 
pulsory education  bureau  all  children  of  school 
age  known  to  us  that  are  not  attending  regularly. 
And  next  to  our  interest  in  these  larger  and 
more  normal  aspects  of  child  life  must  come  a 
watchful  care  for  those  whose  needs  are  more 
unusual.  Is  a  child  beaten  unmercifully,  or 
cruelly  neglected,  or  exposed  to  grave  moral 
dangers  ?  A  day  is  too  long  to  leave  an  impres- 
sionable child  or  any  child  in  such  surround- 
ings. The  more  profoundly  we  believe  in  the 
rights  and  responsibilities  of  parents,  the  more 
quickly  we  will  recognize  this,  and  report  the 
facts  to  the  society  to  protect  children  from 
cruelty,  following  up  our  complaints  to  dis- 
cover what  obstacles,  if  any,  still  interfere  with 
a  proper  enforcement  of  the  law. 


The  Child  in  the  City  41 

Short  shrift  should  be  made  of  tobacconists, 
saloon-keepers  and  dive-keepers  who  trade 
illicitly  with  children. 

Is  there  a  crippled  child,  or  one  with  defec- 
tive sight,  hearing,  breathing  or  speech,  who  is 
not  now  receiving  the  best  medical  care  ?  We 
should  use  our  influence  with  the  parents  to 
see  that  advice  is  sought  promptly,  and  that  the 
doctor's  instructions  are  carried  out.  Is  there  a 
child  whose  father  or  mother  complains  of  his 
waywardness,  perhaps  calling  him  "incor- 
rigible" at  the  age  of  eight  or  nine?  He  too 
needs,  or  more  often  the  parent  needs,  advice 
from  some  child-saving  specialist  who  knows 
how  to  deal  with  the  beginnings  of  waywardness, 
for  both  physical  and  moral  defects  yield  best  to 
treatment  in  the  earlier  stages. 

Is  there  a  child  about  to  be  separated  from  his 
parents  or  his  widowed  mother  because  of  pov- 
erty ?  The  best  and  most  experienced  advice  is 
needed  here.  The  neighbors  will  say,  "  Put 
him  away,"  and  the  charitable,  though  not 
using  this  phrase,  will  often  suggest  placing 
him  in  this  or  that  institution;  but  the  child's 
whole    future    is    involved,    and    the    decision 


42  The  Good  Neighbor 

should  not  depend  upon  our  own  convenience 
or  preferences.  There  are  children's  aid 
societies  or  hke  agencies  that  exist  to  deal 
wisely  with  such  emergencies.  It  may  be  that 
they  can  discover  ways  of  keeping  the  family 
together. 

One  of  the  best  organized  departments  ot 
public  charities  that  I  ever  saw  was  in  charge  of 
a  major  of  the  United  States  Army  in  Cuba. 
The  task  of  his  superintendence  had  been 
thrust  upon  him  without  preparation,  only  a 
few  months  earlier.  But  he  had  acquired 
somewhere  the  excellent  habit  of  recognizing 
promptly  his  lack  of  knowledge  and  of  seeking 
out  at  once  the  best  available  person  from 
whom  to  learn.  In  all  questions  concerning 
the  welfare  of  children,  involving  as  they  do 
a  knowledge  of  recent  and  vital  changes  in 
city  life,  a  knowledge  of  child  psychology,  and 
a  knowledge  also  of  the  foundations  of  the 
family  and  of  the  effects  of  charitable  action 
thereon,  we  find  ourselves  in  a  field  requiring 
more  than  any  other,  perhaps,  trained  sym- 
pathy and  clear  judgment.  If  we  acquire  the 
habit  of  imitating  the  army  major,  of  knocking 


The  Child  in  the  City  43 

at  the  right  door  and  boldly  asking  questions, 
we  shall  all  become  better  and  more  useful 
neighbors. 

As  already  indicated,  the  doors  at  which  we 
are  most  likely  to  need  to  knock,  and  with  the 
addresses  of  w^hich  we  should  therefore  be 
provided,  writing  them  down  at  the  end  of  this 
volume  or  keeping  them  in  some  other  conven- 
ient place,  are  the  doors  of  the  public  education 
association,  the  parents'  association,  the  depart- 
ment of  education,  the  compulsory  education 
bureau,  the  playground  association,  the  chil- 
dren's country  outing  society,  the  society  to 
protect  children  from  cruelty,  the  probation 
officers,  and  the  children's  aid  society. 


Ill 

The  Child  at  Work. 

OOME  years  ago  an  appeal  was  made  to  a 
millionaire  to  contribute  toward  the  support 
of  certain  training  classes  for  boys  newly  ar- 
rived from  Russia  who  were  his  co-religionists. 
He  was  a  humane  man  and  a  generous  one, 
but  he  refused,  on  the  ground  that  he  had 
made  his  own  way  unaided  by  such  instruction 
when  he  had  come  to  this  country  fifty  years 
before,  and  that  the  struggle  had  been  good 
for  him. 

Struggle  is  good  for  all  of  us,  but  what  would 
have  made  the  millionaire  understand  that  the 
industrial  start  for  a  boy  of  ten  or  twelve  is  now 
made  with  an  unreasonably  heavy  handicap, 
that  the  situation  is  no  longer  the  same .''  He 
came  to  a  land  where  the  railroad  was  just 
beginning  to  connect  city  with  city.  He  started 
into  the  country  from  one  of  the  middle-Atlantic 
ports  with  a  pack  on  his  back,  carrying  to  iso- 
lated farms  and  villages  the  goods  for  which 

44 


The  Child  at  Work  45 

there  was  brisk  demand.  What  incidentally 
did  he  learn  ?  English,  geography,  arithmetic, 
trade,  human  nature.  Perhaps,  like  Bob 
Jakin,  he  had  the  solace  of  a  dog;  certainly  he 
had  the  free  air  of  heaven,  and  could  there  have 
been  a  better  preparation  for  the  life  of  that 
time!  The  educational  values  of  the  whole 
process  were  his,  whereas  now  his  modern 
successor,  thrust  into  the  factory  upon  his 
arrival,  without  our  language,  without  school- 
ing and  without  his  physical  growth,  knows 
only  the  benumbing  effect  upon  mind  and  body 
of  an  infinitely  subdivided  process,  in  which  he 
goes  through  a  few  monotonous  motions  for 
many  hours  daily.  Or  another  "dead-end"  occu- 
pation, as  they  are  descriptively  called,  claims 
him  and  he  becomes  a  bundle-boy.  Or  perhaps 
he  enters  the  district  messenger  service  and  is 
sent  to  disreputable  houses  late  at  night,  learn- 
ing as  his  first  lesson  the  worst  that  America  has 
to  teach. 

One  who  has  herself  transgressed  through 
ignorance  cannot  blame  the  millionaire.  I  too 
have  legislated  in  district  committees  for  the 
generation  that  I  remembered  from  childhood 


46  The  Good  Neighbor 

experiences  instead  of  for  the  generation  that 
the  committee  decisions  affected.  Self-support 
at  any  cost  seemed  the  important  thing,  and 
the  mill-owner's  wife  on  the  committee  acted 
in  perfect  good  faith  when  she  assisted  us,  in 
case  after  case,  to  get  work  for  the  young  chil- 
dren of  widows  and  of  disabled  fathers.  But 
the  subsequent  history  of  these  families  and 
children,  as  we  followed  their  careers  for  a 
number  of  years,  opened  our  eyes;  continu- 
ous care  of  families  has  this  advantage  over 
spasmodic  care,  that  we  learn  from  our  blunders. 
The  thrifty  self-reliance  that  we  had  hoped  to 
foster  did  not  develop.  Some  of  the  working 
children  could  not  read  and  write;  many  others 
forgot  before  they  were  fourteen  all  that  they 
had  learned  in  school  under  the  ages  of  ten  and 
eleven;  their  moral  and  physical  tone  was 
lowered;  and  gradually  we  came  to  see  that  the 
best  provision  for  a  destitute  widow  left  with  a 
number  of  children  of  school  age  was  to  assure 
their  entry  into  industry  one  by  one  under 
conditions  that  would  guarantee  to  her  their 
increasing  industrial  efficiency.  This  meant 
that  they  must  have  an  elementary  school  edu- 


The  Child  at  Work  47 

cation,  and  that  they  must  not  be  employed 
long  hours  at  regular  work  before  the  period 
of  adolescence. 

Comparison  of  results  in  various  city  neigh- 
borhoods brought  out  the  further  fact  that  the 
illiterate,  devitalized  working  child  was  not 
always  or  even  usually  the  child  of  the  depend- 
ent widow  or  of  the  disabled  father,  but  that 
many  young  children  were  in  the  mills,  fac- 
tories and  glass  houses  whose  parents  were 
prospering  and  could  perfectly  well  forego 
their  children's  earnings  for  several  years  longer. 
The  poorest  city  neighborhoods  had  not  the 
largest  numbers  of  working  children;  those 
most  convenient  to  the  mills  and  factories, 
those  in  which  the  industrial  opportunity  was 
the  greatest,  were  the  ones  in  which  families 
had  yielded  most  easily  to  the  temptation. 

The  "widowed  mother  ghost,"  as  Miss 
Addams  calls  it,  had  figured  too  largely  in  our 
calculations.  She  tells  of  one  manufacturing 
town  wlicrc  a  school  census  was  taken  that 
showed  3600  children  on  the  census  roll  but  not 
in  the  schools.  Of  this  number  iioo  were  out 
of  school  for  legitimate  reasons,  such  as  attend- 


48  The  Good  Neighbor 

ance  at  private  schools,  removal,  illness,  &c. 
Of  the  remaining  2500  only  66  were  the  chil- 
dren of  widows,  and  of  these  66  it  was  found 
that  23,  or  less  than  one  per  cent,  of  the  2500, 
were  contributing  to  the  support  of  their  moth- 
ers. Why  should  these  2500  be  permitted  to 
work  in  order  that  the  23  widows  might  con- 
tinue to  be  supported  by  their  children  ?  Would 
not  a  neighborly  care  of  these  few  families 
through  private  pensions  carefully  adminis- 
tered— would  not  this  small  expenditure  of 
time  and  money  until  the  children  of  the  23 
were  fully  able  to  work,  have  helped  the  physi- 
cal, industrial  and  moral  future  of  the  whole 
2500  ? 

Next  to  the  widowed  mother  argument,  we 
hear  most  of  the  street  and  its  dangers  as  a 
reason  for  putting  children  to  work  very  early. 
The  plea  that  our  schools  are  overcrowded  is 
irrelevant,  as  the  crowding  is  in  the  grades  for 
younger  children,  for  whom  even  the  advocates 
of  child  labor  would  hardly  suggest  the  factory 
as  a  substitute.  Our  compulsory  education 
laws  must  be  enforced,  of  course,  and  the  child's 
play  time   must   be   turned   to   account   educa- 


The  Child  at  Work 


49 


tionally,  as  we  have  already  seen.  But  the 
street  without  these  rivals  and  unregenerate 
as  it  now  is  has  been  found  by  those  who  know 
child  life  in  cities  intimately  to  compare  favor- 
ably as  a  school  with  the  glass  house,  the  mes- 
senger service  and  most  other  occupations  open 
to  children.  The  superintendent  of  the  House  of 
Refuge  at  Glen  Mills,  Pa.,  a  school  for  wayward 
boys  between  ten  and  sixteen,  declares  that  he 
has  very  few  boys  there  who  were  not  working 
boys  at  the  time  of  or  just  before  their  arrest. 

To  secure  the  release  of  a  boy  of  twelve,  just 
recovered  from  diphtheria  and  with  a  tendency 
to  tuberculosis,  from  illegal  employment  in  a 
Pennsylvania  glass  house,  where  he  was  work- 
ing alternate  night  and  day  shifts  of  9^  and  10 
hours  each  in  a  superheated  atmosphere,  required 
this  spring  the  energetic  efforts  of  three  volun- 
teer societies. 

After  working  hard  to  effect  similar  rescues, 
one  begins  to  wonder  how  long  a  State  will 
endure  an  expensive  Factory  Inspection  Depart- 
ment which  has  no  sympathy  with  the  honest 
enforcement  of  the  child  labor  law,  and  con- 
tinues to  keep  in  office  inspectors  who  violate 
4 


50  The  Good  Neighbor 

its  provisions.  The  real  difficulty,  of  course, 
is  in  the  lack  of  neighborly  contacts.  If  a  thou- 
sand good  neighbors  in  my  city  saw  a  hun- 
dredth of  what  I  am  forced  to  see,  no  moving 
appeals  would  be  needed.  The  plain  facts 
would  make  their  own  appeal,  and  the  employ- 
ment, for  wages,  of  children  under  fourteen, 
their  employment  all  night  in  glass  houses  and 
foundries  under  the  age  of  sixteen,  and  the 
employment  of  foreign-born  children  under 
sixteen  who  cannot  read  and  write  English, 
would   become  impossible. 

Demagogues  appeal  to  foreign  voters  by  de- 
claring that  this  effort  to  exclude  children  under 
sixteen  who  cannot  write  English  is  a  discrimi- 
nation against  foreign  labor.  It  is  really  a 
measure  in  the  interests  of  foreigners,  in  that  it 
hastens  their  Americanization,  or  else  encour- 
ages them  to  seek  homes  away  from  our  con- 
gested centers  of  population.  One  may  have 
little  sympathy  with  the  efforts  to  restrict  im- 
migration to  this  country,  and  yet  may  see  the 
advantage  of  regulating  it  by  means  of  effective 
child  labor  and  housing  laws,  for  no  one  will 
profit   more  directly  than  the  immigrant  him- 


The  Child  at  Work  51 

self  when  we  shall  at  last  come  to  maintain  a 
good  minimum  standard  of  child  care  and  of 
sanitation  in  our  cities. 

Nothing  that  has  been  said  against  the  em- 
ployment of  young  children,  or  of  those  who 
have  had  no  schooling,  should  be  interpreted  as 
showing  a  half-hearted  sympathy  with  the  em- 
ployment ot  older  children  in  our  factories  and 
workshops.  The  crisis  in  the  physical  life  of 
the  child  once  past,  and  the  school  given  its 
fair  chance  with  him,  the  factory  will,  under 
good  modern  conditions  of  organization,  give 
him  the  discipline  and  the  industrial  opportun- 
ity that  he  needs.  Factory  owners  have  had  to 
bear  more  than  their  share  of  abuse  for  labor 
conditions,  because  they  happen  to  be  the  chief 
offenders  in  one  section  of  the  country.  One 
who  has  had  the  co-operation  of  some  of  the 
best  of  them  in  more  than  one  child  labor  com- 
paign  can  testify  that  many  would  welcome  an 
honest  and  strict  enforcement  of  the  laws  that 
exclude  children  under  fourteen  from  wage- 
earning  occupations. 

What  can  each  one  do  to  help  in  the  long 
campaign,  only  just  begun,  for  the  better  pro- 


52  The  Good  Neighbor 

tection  of  childhood  from  premature  employ- 
ment ?  We  can  help  to  form  an  overwhelming 
public  sentiment  against  dishonest  inspectors; 
we  can  learn  the  provisions  of  the  present  child 
labor  law;  and  we  can  report  all  children  known 
by  us  to  be  working  illegally  to  the  factory 
inspection  department,  to  the  compulsory  edu- 
cation department  (if  they  are  of  school  age), 
and  to  the  State  child  labor  committee. 

What  can  we  do  to  help  the  children  who  are 
working  legally,  or  who  are  about  to  enter  upon 
work  ?  The  choice  of  work  in  which  there  is 
a  fair  chance  of  advancement  and  an  oppor- 
tunity to  acquire  real  skill  is  most  important. 
Parents  are  often  glad  of  advice  here;  and  no 
little  care  will  be  needed,  in  the  present  state 
of  industry,  to  avoid  unhealthy  and  dangerous 
occupations,  and  to  discriminate  between  work 
that  prepares  for  future  usefulness  and  "dead- 
end" w^ork.  Evening  courses  at  technical 
schools  cannot  be  recommended  for  the  ambi- 
tious boy  or  girl  under  sixteen  who  is  working 
all  day,  but  for  children  over  sixteen  who  are 
in  good  health  they  give,  in  many  of  our  larger 
cities,  the  very  chance  of  advancement  that  the 


The  Child  at  Work  53 

daily  work  does  not  give,  and  I  am  interested 
to  see  how  many  young  women  who  apply  to 
me  for  positions  have  supplemented  a  meagre 
school  training  by  attending  clubs,  settlements 
and  colleges  that  give  evening  instruction. 

Then  there  is  the  child  just  past  the  school 
age  of  fourteen  who,  having  shown  real  apti- 
tude for  study,  should  be  helped  to  continue 
in  school  by  a  special  scholarship,  if  necessary. 
The  "waste  of  ability"  that  comes  from  our 
neglect  to  fit  exceptional  children  for  the  work 
they  could  do  best  is  quite  as  tragic  in  its  way 
as  ph)  'ical  distress.  Ignorance  is,  indeed,  the 
cruelest  ^^  thieves;  it  robs  and  wounds  us  in  so 
many  ways,  ind  the  wounds  are  never  healed. 

Under  this  section  of  our  subject,  we  should 
have  the  addresses  of  the  State  child  labor  com- 
mittee, the  compulsory  education  bureau,  the 
factory  inspection  department,  the  department 
of  education,  the  working  girls'  clubs,  the  other 
clubs  for  boys  and  girls,  the  young  men's  and 
women's  Christian  associations,  the  technical 
schools,  the  settlements,  and  other  places  hav- 
ing evening  classes. 


IV 

The  Adult  Worker. 

TN  an  introductory  chapter  I  have  referred  to 
"*■  that  isolation  of  the  relatively  well-to-do 
which  is  brought  about  by  the  multiplication  of 
mechanical  contrivances.  We  shop  by  telephone 
and  by  mail;  we  consume  at  one  end  of  the 
trolley  line  and  railway  track  the  commodities 
made  at  the  other;  and  the  details  of  the  pro- 
cesses of  manufacture  and  of  after-handling 
are  hidden  away  from  our  sight  and  knowledge. 
But  it  is  in  this  very  part  of  our  daily  lives,  in 
the  way  that  we  buy  and  consume  both  necessi- 
ties and  luxuries,  that  we  still  influence  most 
vitally  the  lives  of  large  numbers  of  our  neigh- 
bors. We  have  no  contact  with  them,  we  do 
not  recognize  them  when  we  pass  them  on  the 
Street,  and  yet,  for  good  or  for  evil,  we  are 
shaping  their  lives  every  day  by  our  choice 
of  goods. 

Some   cheerful    philosophers    pretend   to   be- 
lieve that   this   influence   is   always   and   inevi- 

54 


The  Adult  Worker  55 

tably  good,  that  by  lavish  expenditure — the 
more  lavish  the  better — we  "make  work  for 
the  poor." 

The  Bradley-Martin  ball  used  to  be  one  of 
the  favorite  illustrations  of  this  form  of  auto- 
matic beneficence.  It  was  assumed  that,  if 
not  spent  on  the  ball,  the  money  would  have 
been  hidden  away  in  the  Bradley-Martin 
stocking;  that  it  could  not  have  been  invested 
in  any  industry  which,  beside  giving  work,  pro- 
duced useful  things. 

The  fact  that  immediately  concerns  us,  how- 
ever, is  that  lavish  expenditure  is  usually  ca- 
pricious expenditure.  What  the  Bradley-Mar- 
tins had  at  their  ball  by  way  of  favors  and 
decorations  and  a  hundred  other  things  were, 
I  imagine,  unique,  or  why  all  the  noise  about 
them  ?  But  nothing  so  demoralizes  industry 
as  caprice  in  buying.  Our  buying  may  be  on  a 
large  scale  or  a  small,  but  it  must  have  purpose 
and  thought  and  continuity,  or  else  we  rouse 
hopes  that  we  can  never  satisfy,  we  increase 
the  uncertainties  of  employment,  we  call  a 
particular  form  of  skill  into  being  only  to  leave 
it  in  disuse. 


56  The  Good  Neighboh 

And  a  taste  for  cheapness  is  equally  disas- 
trous.    Says  Bernard  Bosanquet, 

If  we  will  have  nasty  things,  shoddy  things, 
vulgar  things,  ugly  things,  we  are  condemning 
somebody  to  make  them.  If  we  will  have  im- 
possibly cheap  things,  we  are  condemning  some- 
body to  work  without  proper  pay. 

There  are  legitimate  bargains,  of  course. 
The  department  stores  are  teaching  us  to  be- 
come more  intelligent  consumers  by  offering 
goods  out  of  the  rush  season  at  reduced  prices. 
This  is  only  one  way,  but  a  good  way  as  far 
as  it  goes,  of  helping  us  to  realize  the  advan- 
tages to  both  maker  and  buyer  of  planning 
ahead.  It  contributes  toward  the  greatest 
single  benefit  that  could  be  conferred  upon 
those  who  toil;  namely,  the  equalization  of 
their  work  and  wages  throughout  the  year. 

The  demoralization  of  uncertain  income 
when  that  income  is  very  small,  the  tempta- 
tions of  many  weeks  of  idleness  followed  by 
weeks  of  w'ork  at  high  pressure  during  long 
hours — we  have  little  realization  of  what  these 


The  Adult  Worker  57 

things    mean    in    loss    of   health,    temperance 
morality  and  thrift,  unless  we  have  known  the 
home  life  of  the  intermittent  worker. 

Occupations    dependent    upon    the    weather, 
such     as     dijTfrinc:,     teaming     and     water-front 

tot?      fc>"  o 

laboring,  are  illustrations  of  what  is  meant. 
In  the  building  trades  a  wiser  arrangement  of 
outdoor  and  indoor  tasks  has  reduced  the  length 
of  the  dull  season  very  considerably.  The 
clothing  trade  is,  at  present,  the  extremest 
instance  of  bad  organization.  An  investigation 
made  among  the  garment  workers  of  Philadel- 
phia  in  1903  showed  that  "on  an  average  there 
are  thirty-one  weeks  throughout  the  year  when 
coat  and  trouser  makers  are  idle,  and  there  are 
thirty  idle  weeks  for  the  vest  makers." 

Employers  with  a  neighborly  spirit  can  do  as 
much  as  the  consumer  to  make  the  lives  of 
workers  more  endurable,  and  they  owe  a  special 
duty  to  those  who  are  unprotected  by  trade 
organizations  and  trade  agreements.  They  can 
provide  sanitary  workshops  and  safety  devices 
to  guard  the  life  and  limb  of  the  worker;  they 
can  take  a  proper  pride  in  doing  more  than  the 
law  requires  instead  of  less;    but  in  no  way  can 


58  The  Good  Neighbor 

they  do  a  greater  service  than  in  devising  ways, 
by  every  possible  combination  of  tasks,  to 
equahze  v^^ork  throughout  the  year.  The  super- 
intendent of  a  gas  company,  wishing  to  give  the 
fitters  steady  work,  advertised  to  sell  gas  stoves 
to  be  paid  for  during  the  following  summer, 
on  condition  that  they  were  to  be  put  in  place 
at  the  company's  convenience.  We  are  only 
beginning  to  realize  the  thousands  of  ways  in 
which  such  forethought  could  be  made  of  bene- 
fit to  the  consumer,  to  the  manufacturer,  and, 
above  all,  to  the  worker. 

Each  one  can  help.  This  is  the  burden  of 
every  chapter  in  this  book,  but  it  is  peculiarly 
true  here.  We  are  all  employers,  and  life  would 
not  be  overstrained  but  cheered  and  enriched 
if  we  could  contrive  to  put  more  brains  and 
heart  into  our  purchase  of  goods  and  of  service. 
If  we  are  going  to  need  furniture-covers,  it  is 
unneighborly  to  wait  until  everyone  needs  them 
before  we  try  to  have  them  made.  If  our  trunks 
are  out  of  repair,  why  not  send  them  to  be 
mended  just  after  we  return  to  town,  and  give 
the  workmen  ample  time,  instead  of  waiting 
until  just  before  we  leave  again  and  telephoning 


The  Adult  Worker  59 

excitedly  that  we  must  have  them  at  once  ? 
Illustrations  could  be  multiplied  indefinitely. 
Planning  ahead,  sending  work  back  to  the  home 
laundress  when  we  are  away,  saving  work  that 
can  wait  for  the  dull  season,  realizing  that  each 
life  which  we  touch  is  a  life  apart  and  not  merely 
a  convenient  appendage  to  our  own — such  a 
daily  habit  brings  its  own  reward  in  a  more 
equable  temper  and  in  happier  human  relations. 
But  rewards  are  beside  the  mark;  all  who 
work  for  us  are  our  neighbors.  The  priest  and 
the  Levite  were  respectable  citizens  certainly, 
and  busy  ones  probably,  but — they  passed  by 
on  the  other  side.  That  we  may  avoid  doing 
likewise  through  any  blindness  to  the  plight  of 
our  neighbors  who  toil,  the  Consumers'  League 
comes  to  our  assistance.  Its  suggestions  are 
very  simple.     It  asks  us  to 

Do  no  shopping  after  five  o'clock. 

Do  no  shopping  on  Saturday  afternoons  and 
during  the  week  before  Christmas. 

Receive  no  packages  delivered  after  six  o'clock 
without  protest  to  the  management. 

Deal  with  Fair  Houses  giving  a  ten-hour  day : 


6o  The  Good  Neighbor 

a  weekly  half-holiday  durhig  two  summer  months ; 
at  least  one  week's  vacation  with  pay  in  summer ; 
compensation  for  overtime ;  lunch  and  toilet  rooms 
apart  from  work-room  and  from  each  other  ;  seats 
for  employees  and  employees  permitted  to  use 
them  ;  weekly  payment  of  wages  ;  terms  of  em- 
ployment such  as  to  enable  employee  to  lead  a 
self-respecting  and  moral  life  ;  obedience  to  the 
laws  of  the  State.  The  League  furnishes  lists 
of  such  houses  for  various  localities. 

Ask  for  underwear  made  under  sanitary  condi- 
tions and  without  child  labor  or  sweatshop  labor. 
The  League  grants  the  use  of  its  label  to  manu- 
facturers meeting  these  conditions. 

One  of  the  objections  to  the  sweating  system 
is  found  in  the  inability  of  human  beings  to 
compete  successfully,  by  hand  or  foot  power, 
with  steam  power.  Work  that  can  be  done 
and  is  done  equally  well  by  machines  cannot  be 
done  by  men,  and  still  less  by  women,  without 
a  physical  strain  that  steadily  reduces  their 
earning  power.  When,  therefore,  work  is 
"farmed  out"  by  manufacturers" to  be  done  in 
tenement  shops  or  in  the  homes  of  the  workers, 
the  hours  are  necessarily  long  and  the  pay  small. 


The  Adult  Worker  6i 

The  spread  of  disease  by  this  method  of  manu- 
facture is  a  strong  argument  against  it,  but  the 
inevitable  effect  upon  the  worker,  removed  as 
he  is  from  the  protection  of  the  factory  laws 
and  from  the  immediate  oversight  of  his  em- 
ployer, is  a  still  stronger  one. 

A  Philadelphia  member  of  the  Consumers' 
League  contracted  diphtheria  from  a  visit  to  a 
room  in  which  a  woman  was  finishing  children's 
flannel  dresses  by  the  bedside  of  a  child  who  died 
later  of  the  disease.  Into  how  many  houses  thes'e 
little  dresses  carried  the  germs'  of  contagion  is  un- 
known, but  the  incident  is  mentioned  here  because 
the  woman's  earnings  were,  at  the  time,  35  cents 
for  a  thirteen-hour  day. 

Before  her  child  was  taken  ill,  she  was  be- 
sought by  a  neighboring  settlement  to  leave  the 
child  at  the  day  nursery,  and  take  up  factory 
work  ;  but  home  work  seemed  readier  at  hand 
and  she  refused.  After  the  child's  death,  she 
did  enter  a  textile  mill,  and  is  now  earning  $j  a 
week  for  five  and  a  half  days'  work.* 


*  This  does  not  mean  that  widows  with  children  should  always  be 
urged  to  enter  factories,  but  that  the  home  industry,  if  one  be 
found,  should  not  be  factory  work. 


62  The  Good  Neighbor 

Relief  funds   cannot   be  administered  wisely 
without    keeping   industrial    questions   continu- 
ally in  mind.     Through   ignorance  of  them  it 
is  possible  for   charity  to  make  grievous  blun- 
ders.   If  a  man  with  four  children  can  earn  only 
^6  a  week  as  an  unskilled  laborer  in  a  large 
city   where    rentals    and   other   living   expenses 
are^high,  it  is  surely  better,  instead  of  merely 
supplementing    this    income,    to    spend    money 
and  time  jnseeking^orhim  a  new  field  \yhere 
his  labor  is  in  greater  demand  and  whereliy- 
ing   expenses    are   cheaper.      A   woman   works 
hard   and   earns   $3    a   week.      Should   charity 
supplement  this  amount,  in  order  to  make  it 
possible  for  her  to  live,  or  should  it  use  every 
resource  at  its  command  to  secure  for  her  better 
paying  work,  in  case  she  is  fitted  to  do  it;    or, 
in  case  she  is  not,  to  train  her  for  better  work, 
and  support  her  entirely  during  the  period  of 
training  ?    The  latter  is  the  better  course,  not 
only  for  her  sake  but  for  the  sake  of  all  indepen- 
dent workers  with  whom,  at  a  ^3  wage,  she  is 
coming  in  competition. 

The    entrance   of  many   women    into   wage- 
earning  occupations   is  one  of  the  natural   re- 


The  Adult  Worker  63 

suits  of  the  abandonment  of  home  industries 
to  which  reference  has  been  made  in  the  chap- 
ter on  the  Child  in  the  City.  For  reasons  that 
affect  the  physical  and  moral  future  of  our 
race,  that  entrance  must  be  safeguarded  by 
special  regulation  as  to  hours.  The  interna- 
tional treaty  signed  at  Berne  last  year  pro- 
hibiting night  work  for  women  employed  in 
factories  and  workshops,  places  fourteen  Euro- 
pean nations  ahead  of  the  United  States  in 
their  care  of  the  health  and  welfare  of  mothers. 
If,  as  some  claim,  the  regulation  of  women's 
hours  of  employment  by  statute  would  be 
unconstitutional  in  this  country,  it  would  be  a 
ver)'  patriotic  thing  to  amend  the  constitution 
to  meet  a  condition  undreamed  of  when  it  was 
framed. 

There  is  one  other  industrial  handicap  that 
the  good  neighbor  must  never  forget — the  handi- 
cap of  race  and  national  prejudice.  The  par- 
able of  the  Samaritan  is  so  supremely  signifi- 
cant just  because  the  rescued  man  was  a  Jew 
and  his  rescuer  was  of  an  alien  people.  The 
group  that  surrounded  Teacher  and  questioner 
on  the  day  that  this  tale  was  first  told  felt  with 


64  The  Good  Neighbor 

all  the  intensity  of  their  pride  of  race  the  dra- 
matic contrast,  but  too  often  we  miss  it  alto- 
gether and  the  meaning  of  the  parable  beside, 
interpreting  it  quite  comfortably  to  teach  us 
that  we  must  be  kind  to  one  another  even  at 
some  personal  inconvenience. 

A  charity  that  publishes  appeals  for  indi- 
vidual families  in  the  daily  papers  (without 
names,  of  course)  has  discovered  that  appeals 
for  money  to  pension  a  German  or  an  American 
widow  with  children  meet  a  ready  response, 
but  that  an  appeal  for  an  Italian  widow  usually 
brings  no  money  whatever.  The  latest  immi- 
grant group,  and  the  one  condemned  to  do  the 
heaviest  and  poorest  paid  work,  is  usually  the 
one  against  which,  unconsciously,  we  allow 
ourselves  to  take  this  antagonistic  attitude. 
Quite  apart  from  our  opinion  as  to  the  wisdom 
or  unwisdom  of  the  immigration  laws,  we  owe 
a  neighborly  duty  to  those  whom  we  have 
allowed  to  enter. 

Around  industrial  questions  and  their  solu- 
tion the  social  unrest  of  our  time  seems  to  center. 
Unneighborliness  on  both  sides  has  been  the 
rule  rather  than  the  exception,  and  still  I  touch 


The  Adult  Worker  65 

upon  the  subject  only  in  so  far  as  it  concerns 
the  handicapped.  The  topic  has  no  Hmitations, 
but  the  book  and  its  author  have  very  definite 
ones,  making  any  adequate  treatment  in  this 
place  of  the  relation  of  employer  and  employee 
impossible. 


V 

The  Tenant. 

TN  one  of  Miss  Edgeworth's  Incomparable 
"*'  tales  of  Irish  life,  the  hero  returns  after  many 
years'  absence  to  his  own  country,  and,  in  a 
fit  of  generosity,  builds  a  new  cottage  for  his 
old  nurse.  But  she  is  far  from  happy  in  her 
model  quarters.  Missing  the  smoke  to  which 
she  has  been  accustomed,  she  finds  the  place 
cold;  partitions  are  soon  torn  down  for  firing, 
and  "the  whole  is  transformed  into  a  scene  of 
dirt,  rubbish  and  confusion. " 

The  moral  might  be  drawn  from  this  that 
the  Earl  of  Glenthorn  had  been  too  kind;  that 
improved  housing  for  ignorant  tenants  is  always 
foredoomed  to  failure.  But  a  truer  moral  is 
based  on  the  Earl's  many  years  of  absentee 
landlordism.  As  he  had  pursued  his  own 
pleasures  in  London,  he  had  been  oblivious  for 
so  long  a  time  to  the  real  condition  of  his  ten- 
antry that  his  kindness  had  come  too  late. 

Absenteeism  is  not  the  only  cause  of  bad  hous- 

66 


The  Tenant  67 

ing  conditions.  The  thrifty  foreigner  is  a  newer 
type  of  landlord  who  often  puts  his  savings 
into  a  house  which  he  sublets,  living  himself 
in  two  or  three  of  its  rooms,  and  greedily  exact- 
ing for  the  rest  the  highest  possible  rentals 
for  the  fewest  possible  conveniences.  But  this 
is  the  landlord  with  a  low  standard  of  living. 
The  landlord  with  a  higher  standard,  who  used 
to  collect  his  own  rents  or,  at  least,  personally 
superintend  the  repairs,  was  rarely  a  hard  man. 
Contact  had  developed  his  neighborly  side. 

It  is  generally  supposed  that  New  York  is 
the  only  city  with  a  tenement  house  problem. 
Under  the  accepted  definition  of  a  tenement 
house  this  is  not  true,  though  it  is  true  that  New 
York  is  the  only  city  in  this  country  that  has  a 
majority  of  its  total  population  in  houses 
erected  for  a  number  of  families  each,  houses  of 
the  six-story,  narrow-airshaft  variety;  and  in 
this  regard  her  housing  conditions  are  peculiar. 

I  shall  not  attempt  to  tell  here  the  story  that 
has  been  told  many  times  before  of  her  deter- 
mined fight  for  better  conditions;  of  the  suc- 
cessful campaign,  beginning  in  a  committee  of 
the   New   York   Charity   Organization   Society, 


68  The  Good  Neighbor 

continuing  through  a  State-appointed  commis- 
sion, through  the  creation,  later,  of  a  new 
tenement  house  department  with  wide  powers, 
and  still  carried  on  to-day  through  the  active 
interest  of  many  friends  of  the  poor  in  the 
work  of  that  department.  I  turn  instead  to 
the  cities  in  which  it  is  confidently  asserted  that 
there  are  no  tenements,  that  "this  is  a  city  of 
homes. "  The  reports  of  housing  investigations 
in  two  such  places  lie  before  me  as  I  write. 
They  are  filled  with  reproductions  from  photo- 
graphs of  the  most  revolting  conditions. 

What  is  a  tenement .?  It  is  a  house  occupied 
by  three  or  more  families  living  independently 
of  each  other  and  doing  their  cooking  on  the 
premises.  In  nearly  all  large  cities  said  to  be 
free  from  the  evils  of  bad  housing  there  are 
thousands  of  these  houses,  built  for  one  family 
and  occupied  by  three  or  more. 

Conspicuously  bad  features  often  found  in  these 
dwellings  are  inadequate  water  supply  and  sani- 
tary accommodations  ;  broken  and  defective 
plumbing  ;  surface  drainage  ;  wet  cellars  ;  yards 
piled  with    rubbish  ;    live  stock   kept  within  the 


The  Tenant  69 

houses ;  overcrowding  of  sleeping  rooms  ;  lack 
of  privacy  ;  no  proper  provision  for  the  disposal 
of  garbage  ;  and  insufficient  light  and  air  due  to 
the  erection  of  a  second  building  on  the  same  lot. 


Another  problem  of  such  cities  is  the  alley 
house.  One  long  double  row  of  alley  houses  pre- 
senting a  rather  homelike  aspect  in  the  report 
(little  houses,  however  unwholesome,  are  apt  to 
do  this  in  pictures)  is  said  by  the  Board  of  Health 
to  have  had  at  least  one  case  of  tuberculosis  in 
each  house,  and,  during  the  year  1906,  eight 
deaths  from  tuberculosis  had  occurred  in  fam- 
ilies there  that  were  known  to  the  Federated 
Charities. 

Why,  it  may  be  asked,  do  tenants  endure  such 
conditions  .''  The  reasons  are  many.  Migration 
to  cities  creates  a  great  demand  for  living 
quarters  that  are  convenient  to  work  and,  in 
the  case  of  foreigners,  near  one's  compatriots. 
The  increased  demand  for  tenements  sends  up 
rentals  and  makes  it  easy  for  real  estate  agents 
to  dismiss  tenants  who  demand  repairs  or  report 
nuisances.  Accordingly,  the  patient  or  indif- 
ferent tenant   stavs   and   conditions  deteriorate. 


70  The  Good  Neighbor 

But  always,  as  a  contributing  cause,  we  have 
the  modern  habit  of  loss  of  contact,  and  the 
administration  of  properties   by   middlemen. 


A  modern  charity  organized  on  the  district 
plan  became  aware  of  some  of  the  inconveniences 
of  delegated  ownership  when  it  took  charge,  in  a 
poor  neighborhood,  ot  a  district  office  that  had 
been  in  other  charitable  hands.  The  society's 
paid  visitor  was  sickened  by  the  foul  odors  of  the 
place,  an  old  vault  was  found  to  be  leaking  into 
a  cellar  at  the  rear,  and  the  cellars  of  the  rear 
houses  were  flooded  by  each  rainstorm.  Exami- 
nation of  the  city  plan  showed  that  the  street  had 
never  been  underdrained.  After  some  months 
of  unremitting  effort  this  was  accomplished. 
Whereupon  the  real  estate  agent  ordered  the 
charity  to  vacate  the  premises,  saying  that  it  had 
caused  him  more  trouble  and  expense  in  six 
months  than  the  former  tenant  had  caused  in  six- 
teen years.  This  was  quite  true,  but  the  tenants 
in  the  rear  houses  were  very  grateful  for  dry 
cellars  and  sweeter  air,  even  at  a  slightly  advanced 
rental ;  and  when  an  appeal  was  made  from  the 
real  estate  agent  to  the  lawyer  who  hired  him 
and  who  was,  in  turn,  hired  by  the  owner,  the 


The  Tenant  71 

society  was  permitted  to  remain.  It  took  time 
and  influence  to  accomplish  this  improvement ; 
the  charitable  society's  neighbors  had  neither. 


Administration  by  middlemen  will  continue, 
of  course,  but  owners,  in  the  last  analysis,  are 
responsible  for  any  injustice  or  lack  of  consid- 
eration of  which  their  agents  may  be  guilty, 
and  to  the  owners  of  property  all  who  love 
their  fellow  men  have  a  right  to  turn  for  redress, 
when   housing  conditions   become  intolerable. 

What  is  the  very  least  that  a  landlord  who  is 
also  a  good  neighbor  should  know  about  his 
properties  in  poor  neighborhoods  ?  First  of  all, 
he  should  have  seen  them  with  his  own  eyes. 
Many  estates  are  administered  by  trust  com- 
panies who  employ  local  real  estate  agents  for 
the  poorer  properties.  Often  the  owner  does 
not  know  what  he  owns  nor  where.  The  very 
least  that  one  who  receives  income  from  a  house 
inhabited  by  poor  tenants  can  do  is  to  visit  it, 
go  all  over  it  and  assure  himself  personally  that 
no  part  of  his  prosperity  rests  upon  the  insecure 
foundation  of  conditions  dangerous  to  health 
and  life  itself 


^^  The  Good  Neighbor 

The  landlord  without  much  experience  of 
housing  conditions  who  makes  such  a  visit  of 
inspection  will  sometimes  be  deceived  by  the 
effects  of  paint  and  whitewash.  These  change 
the  superficial  aspects  of  a  property,  but  they 
do  not  cure  its  fundamental  structural  and 
sanitary  defects.  "It  is  not  unusual,"  writes  a 
correspondent  who  has  been  interested  in  hous- 
ing reforms,  "to  hear  visitors  condemn  in  un- 
qualified terms  houses  which  are  in  very  fair 
structural  'and  sanitary  condition,  but  which 
may,  at  the  time  of  their  visit,  have  lacked  paint 
or  had  cluttered  yards  or  dirty  rooms. "  The 
important  things  to  look  for  on  a  first  visit  are 
insecure  foundations,  dangerous  or  dark  stairs 
and  hallways,  leaky  and  insecure  roofs  and 
walls,  wet  cellars,  defective  plumbing,  inade- 
quate water  supply,  dark  rooms  and  over- 
crowded sleeping  apartments.  The  minimum 
standard  of  cubic  air  space  for  each  adult  sleeper 
is  400  cubic  feet. 

This  inspection  might  well  be  preceded  by  an 
examination  of  the  local  building  laws,  and 
the  visit  itself  should  make  clear  whether  their 
provisions  are  being  obeyed. 


The  Tenant  73 

For  the  landlord  who  is  moved,  by  this  per- 
sonal contact  with  bad  conditions,  to  seek 
remedies,  the  following  more  detailed  sugges- 
tions about  tenements,  compiled  after  corre- 
spondence with  several  housing  experts,  may  be 
found  useful.  I  am  indebted  to  Mrs.  Alice 
Lincoln  of  Boston,  to  Mr.  Lawrence  Veiller 
and  Miss  Emily  W.  Dinwiddle  of  New  York, 
and  to  Mr.  Wallace  Hatch  formerly  of  Wash- 
ington and  now  of  Philadelphia,  for  the  great 
pains  with  which  they  have  answered  my  ques- 
tions, though  they  must  not  be  held  respon- 
sible for  the  result  as  here  given: 

1 .  Cellar  clean  and  free  from  rubbish .  Where 
soil  is  contaminated  from  leakage  of  privy  vaults, 
defective  house  drains  or  any  other  cause,  a  con- 
crete floor  is  needed.  The  main  pipe  carrying 
waste  to  the  street  sewer  should  be  trapped  and 
provided  with  hand-holes  for  cleaning  purposes. 
An  unobstructed  house  drain  and  a  sanitary,  well- 
ventilated  cellar  are  of  the  first  importance  because 
the  cellar  air  is  drawn  up  through  the  house. 

2.  Plumbing.  The  owner  should  ascertain 
whether  a  sewer  runs  through  the  street  and 
whether  the  house  drain  is   properly  connected 


74  The  Good  Neighbor 

with  it.  There  should  be  running  water  on 
every  landing  and,  if  possible,  in  every  apart- 
ment. There  should  be  at  least  one  water-closet 
for  every  two  families,  and  these  closets  should 
be  kept  locked.  Cleanly  tenants  often  suffer  un- 
justly from  the  filthy  habits  of  others.  The  in- 
terior plumbing  should  be  tested,  and  the  repairs 
should  be  made  by  a  competent  plumber. 

3.  Halls  and  Rooms.  If  the  stairs  are  dark, 
an  effort  should  be  made  to  light  them  by  means 
of  glass  panels  in  doors  or  windows,  by  transoms 
over  doors,  or  by  a  skylight.  Every  living  room 
should  be  light  throughout  and  adequately  venti- 
lated from  the  outside  air. 

4.  Roof  ,  Tardy  etc.  Roof  clean  and  free  from 
leaks.  There  should  be  a  sufficient  yard,  free 
from  rubbish,  in  which  to  dry  clothes.  If  no 
yard  can  be  provided,  the  roof  should  be  made 
available  for  this  purpose.  Cans  for  ashes  and 
garbage  should  be  furnished.  Separate  bins  for 
each  family  should  be  provided  in  the  cellar, 
large  enough  to  hold  at  least  half  a  ton  of  coal. 
The  legal  provisions  for  protection  against  fire 
and  for  escape  from  fire  should  be  carefully 
observed. 

5.  Occupancy.  Conditions  of  immorality, 
overcrowding   and    dirt    among   present   tenants 


The  Tenant  75 

should  be  ascertained.  Those  who  remain  stub- 
bornly incorrigible  should  be  removed.  The 
practice  of  subletting  should  be  strictly  prohibited. 
The  presence  of  animals  on  the  premises,  other 
than  dogs,  cats  and  small  pets,  should  not  be 
permitted. 

It  may  be  objected  that,  though  attention  to 
details  such  as  these  are  well  enough  when 
tenants  are  cleanly,  they  are  worse  than  wasted 
on  tenants  of  the  type  of  the  Earl's  nurse,  who 
are  by  preference  careless  and  untidy.  But  the 
experience  of  volunteer  rent  collectors  who  have 
worked  systematically  to  change  living  condi- 
tions proves  that  even  here  a  little  patience 
and  skill  can  accomplish   wonders. 

Forty-three  years  ago  this  plan  of  collect- 
ing was  begun  in  London  by  Miss  Octavia  Hill 
in  the  management  of  certain  bad  tenement 
properties  in  a  rough  Marylebone  court.  It  is 
pleasant  to  associate  with  this  first  venture  in 
philanthropic  rent  collecting  the  name  of  Ruskin, 
who  furnished  the  capital  for  an  undertaking  that 
has  gradually  come  to  have  such  far-reaching 
and     beneficent  consequences.    "  I  find  it  easy 


76  The  Good  Neighbor 

enough  to  raise  the  house,"  said  Miss  Hill  to  an 
American  visitor,  "but  if  you  raise  it  too  rap- 
idly the  tenants  fall  out  through  the  bottom." 
Her  plan,  in  brief,  has  been  to  exact  regular 
payments  and  to  collect  rentals  weekly  through 
a  volunteer  rent  collector  who  becomes  well- 
acquainted  with  the  tenants  and  slowly  but 
steadily  uses  her  influence  to  secure  their  co- 
operation in  all  improvements.  Writing  of  the 
management  of  her  first  London  court,  Miss 
Hill  says, 

I  had  been  informed  that  the  honest  habitually 
•  pay  for  the  dishonest,  the  owner  relying  upon 
their  payments  to  compensate  for  all  losses :  but 
I  was  amazed  to  find  to  what  extent  this  was  the 
case.  Six,  seven  or  eight  weeks'  rent  was  due 
from  most  tenants,  and  in  some  cases  very  much 
more  ;  whereas,  since  I  took  possession  of  the 
houses  (of  which  I  collect  the  rents  each  week 
myself)  I  have  never  allowed  a  second  week's 
rent  to  become  due,  .  .  . 

As  soon  as  I  entered  into  possession  each  family 
had  an  opportunity  of  doing  better  :  Those  who 
would  not  pay,  or  who  led  clearly  immoral  lives, 
were   ejected.      The    rooms    they  vacated  were 


The  Tenant  77 

cleansed,  the  tenants  who  showed  signs  of  im- 
provement were  moved  into  them,  and  thus,  in 
turn,  an  opportunity  was  obtained  for  having  each 
room  distempered  and  painted. 

And  writing  thirty-three  years  later,  after  this 
plan  had  been  tried  in  many  London  neighbor- 
hoods, in  other  parts  of  Great  Britain,  and  in  this 
country.  Miss  Hill  says  of  the  volunteers  working 
under  her  direction:      We  have  tried,  so  far  as 
possible,  to  enlist  ladies  who  would  have  an  idea 
of  how,  by  diligent  attention  to  all  business  which 
devolves  upon  a  landlord,  by  wise  rule  with  re- 
gard to  all  duties  which  a  tenant  should  fulfil,  by 
sympathetic  and  just  decisions  with  a  view  to  the 
common  good,  a  high  standard  of  management 
could  be  attained.      Repairs  promptly  and  effici- 
ently attended  to,  references  carefully  taken  up, 
cleaning  sedulously  supervised,  overcrowding  put 
an  end  to,  the  blessing  of  ready  money  payments 
enforced,  accounts  strictly  kept,  and,  above  all, 
tenants  so  sorted  as  to  be  helpful  to  one  another. 
These  and  many  other  duties  devolve  on  a  lady 
who   manages  houses   as    distinguished    from    an 
ordinary  district  visitor. 

Americans  who  have  studied  under  Miss  Hill 
have  introduced  her  plan  of  managing  tenement 


78  The  Good  Neighbor 

properties  into  the  United  States.  The  Octavia 
Hill  Association  of  Philadelphia  was  started  in 
this  way.  There  are  also,  working  on  another 
plan,  associations  for  huilding  model  tene- 
ments, like  the  City  and  Suburban  Homes 
Company  in  New  York.  And  crusades  for 
improved  housing  regulation  have  been  or- 
ganized in  some  cities  by  the  charity  organiza- 
tion society,  in  others  independently.  The  chief 
sources  of  local  information  about  housing  are 
the  board  of  health,  the  committees  or  associa- 
tions formed  to  secure  housing  reforms,  and 
the  philanthropic  building  companies. 


VI 

The  Man  on  the  Street. 

TXT'E  have  seen  that  "thy  neighbor  is  thy 
^  '  fellowman  when  thou  and  he  are  near," 
whether  this  nearness  be  geographical,  social, 
industrial,  economic  or  civic,  and  that  no 
strained  interpretation  of  the  parable  of  the 
Good  Samaritan  is  necessary  to  make  this 
clear.  But  the  most  obvious  application  of  the 
words  of  the  Master  and  the  one  with  which 
we  are  most  familiar  is  to  the  relief  of  physical 
distress. 

One  often  hears  charitable  people  say  that 
they  would  rather  help  ninety-nine  unworthy 
than  let  one  worthy  man  go  unhelped,  and  they 
think  that  they  are  quoting  the  Scriptures 
when  they  say  this.  But  it  was  one  that 
was  lost  in  the  parable  of  the  sheep  and  not 
ninety  and  nine  at  all.  Nowhere  in  the 
Bible  is  this  division  of  those  who  claim  to  be  in 
distress  into  "worthy"  and  "unworthy"  ever 
made,  and  the  division  itself  has  no  practical 

79 


8o  The  Good  Neighbor 

value.  One  of  the  hardest  crosses  that  a  worker 
in  a  charity  organization  society  has  to  bear  is 
the  popular  impression  that  all  his  efforts  to 
secure  more  adequate  and  intelligent  care  for 
the  needy  are  only  so  many  clever  devices  for 
protecting  the  tenderhearted  from  imposition 
by  discriminating  for  them  between  the  "  de- 
serving" and  the  "undeserving."  It  is  true 
that  discrimination  is  necessary,  but  for  quite 
another  purpose.  We  are  all  deserving  of  some- 
thing and  all  undeserving  of  something  else; 
and  when  we  are  in  trouble,  from  the  least  to 
the  greatest  of  us,  or  even  only  think  that  we 
are,  the  one  practical  thing  is  to  discover  what 
will  get  us  out  and  keep  us  out. 

What  is  the  truth  about  giving .''  It  has  never 
been  expressed  better  than  by  Phillips  Brooks, 
who  says, 

I  want  to  give  the  poor  man  what  is  mine. 
It  is  my  duty  and  my  wish  to  give.  What  shall 
I  give  him  .?  If  I  have  got  no  further  into  the 
idea  of  property  than  the  first  stage,  I  am  satis- 
fied when  I  have  filled  his  empty  hands  with 
dollars.  But  if  I  have  gone  further  than  that, 
I  cannot  be  content  till   I  have  bestowed  on  him 


The  Man  on  the  Street  8i 

by  personal  care  something  of  that  which  dollars 
represent  to  me,  and  without  which  they  would  be 
valueless,  the  noble  and  ennobling  circumstances 
which  civilization  has  gathered  round  my  lot. 
But  if  I  have  gone  deeper  still  and  learned  to 
count  truth  the  one  precious  thing  in  all  the 
world,  I  shall  feel  that  I  have  "spared  to  think 
of  my  own  ' '  to  give  him,  till  I  have  at  least 
tried  to  provide  not  merely  for  the  body  but  for 
the  mind.  And  then,  to  take  once  more  the 
final  step,  as  soon  as  I  have  come  to  think  of 
character  as  the  one  only  thing  that  I  can  really 
call  my  own,  my  conscience  will  not  let  me  rest, 
I  shall  think  all  my  benefaction  an  imperfect, 
crippled  thing  until  I  have  touched  the  springs 
of  character  in  him  and  made  him  a  sharer  of 
that  which  it  is  the  purpose  and  joy  of  my  life 
to  try  to  be. 

Here  we  have  the  progressive  stages  of  giv- 
ing: (i)  Money  or  its  equivalents,  (2)  more 
ennobling  circumstances,  (3)  character. 
"Sometimes,"  writes  the  great  preacher  in 
another  place,  "the  higher  gift  may  be  so  di- 
rectly given  that  the  type  is  needless.  Some- 
times the  modern  benefactor  may  say  like  Peter 
at  the  temple  gate, '  Silver  and  gold  have  I  none, 
6 


82  The  Good  Neighbor 

but  in  the  name  of  Jesus  rise  and  walk.'  " 
Often,  however,  the  money  help  is  needed,  and 
how  can  the  busy  men  and  women  to  whom 
this  book  is  addressed,  how  can  they,  occupied 
with  many  other  duties,  be  persuaded  that  the 
money  help  which  is  given  without  providing 
at  the  same  time  for  better  circumstances  and 
better    contacts,  hinders  its    recipients  cruelly  ? 

Less  than  one-tenth,  probably,  of  those  who 
need  our  charitable  consideration  are  beggars 
or  vagrants,  but  this  class  is  ten  times  as  much 
in  evidence  as  all  the  others  and  receives,  there- 
fore, ten  times  as  much  attention  of  a  mistaken 
and  demoralizing  but  well-meant  sort  from  the 
charitable  public.  It  is  to  the  homeless,  there- 
fore, that  one  naturally  turns  in  considering  the 
treatment  of  distress. 

What  of  the  man  who  has  slipped  from 
under,  who  leads  a  vagrant  life  and  no  longer 
claims  a  neighborhood  or  neighbors  or  the 
privileges  of  neighborliness  ?  Some  will  see  in 
him  the  expression  of  that  rebel  side  of  us 
which  longs  to  be  off  with  the  gypsies.  Some 
will  recognize  and  sympathize  with  that  gaming 
instinct  which  prompts  him  to  find  in  the  very 


The  Man  on  the  Street  83 

uncertainties  of  the  road  its  chief  attraction — 
a  run  of  bad  luck  to-day,  a  golden  harvest  to- 
morrow, all  won,  every  cent  of  it,  by  a  skil- 
fully played  game.  Some  will  see  in  him  the 
victim  of  a  clumsy  and  mistaken  industrial 
order.  Some  will  welcome  him,  be  the  cause  of 
his  outstretched  palm  what  it  may,  as  a  con- 
venient object  for  the  development  of  their  own 
charitable  impulses.  And  some,  though  their 
number  is  not  yet  many,  will  long  to  know  the 
whole  truth  about  him — the  complex,  baffling, 
difficult  truth — in  order  that  they  may  no  longer 
unwittingly  help  to  manufacture  his  kind,  and 
in  order  too  that  they  may  win  him  away  from 
his  poor,  mistaken,  unneighborly,  anti-social  self. 
The  vagrant  needs  more  help,  more  sym- 
pathy, more  thought  and  care  than  he  now 
receives;  and  I  feel  that  it  would  be  almost 
a  crime  to  discourage  the  giving  of  small  change 
on  the  street,  at  the  house-door  and  back  gate, 
or  in  the  business  office,  to  this  class,  unless 
at  the  same  time  givers  were  shown  a  better 
way  of  helping.  The  way  has  been  pointed 
out  in  its  progressive  stages,  (i)  money  or  its 
equivalents,  (2)  more  ennobling  circumstances. 


84  The  Good  Neighbor 

(3)  character.  Money  and  nothing  more  sends 
him  back  into  the  vicious  circle  of  his  present 
life,  among  circumstances  that  are  less  and  less 
ennobling,  that  are  made  more  actively  degrad- 
ing, indeed,  by  our  alms. 

"The  two  conditions  of  human  happiness," 
says  Charles  Booth,  "are  work  and  affection. 
And  these  conditions  are  best  fulfilled  when 
a  man  works  hard  for  those  he  loves."  This 
points  the  way  of  reform  for  the  vagrant.  We 
do  any  man,  rich  or  poor,  a  great  wrong,  when 
we  help  to  make  it  possible  for  him  to  live  with- 
out human  ties  and  without  occupation.  Upon 
the  provision  of  work  immediately,  and  upon 
the  restoration  of  home  ties  whenever  possible, 
all  effective  aid  for  the  man  on  the  street  must 
be  founded. 

But  the  man  on  the  street  applies  to  thou- 
sands, and  hundreds  of  these  have  some  impulse 
to  help  him.  How  can  each  give  him  the  equiv- 
alent of  money  in  work,  plus  more  ennobling 
circumstances,  plus  character .''  To  do  this 
ourselves  for  all  who  apply  obviously  is  impos- 
sible.    It  is  far  easier  to  undo  what  some  one 


The  Man  on  the  Street  85 

else  is  already  striving  to  do  by  giving  what  is 
asked  for  instead  of  what  is  needed. 

To  avoid  this  endless  duplication  and  also  to 
provide  w^ork  and  better  surroundings  promptly 
for  each  applicant,  a  modern  institution  comes 
to  our  rescue  as  effectively  as  the  inn  came  to 
the  rescue  of  the  rescuing  Samaritan.  The 
wayfarers'  lodges  or  municipal  lodging-houses 
that  are  provided  in  some  places  have  become 
our  best  modern  substitute  for  the  innkeeper, 
though  they  are  most  useful  in  dealing  promptly 
with  an  appeal  for  help  and  serve  only  as  a  first 
step  in  effective  relief.  Every  householder  and 
every  business  house  should  be  provided  with 
free  tickets  to  these  shelters,  and  no  such  place 
should  be  used  unless  there  is  a  work-test  of 
some  sort  attached  to  it,  so  that  wayfarers 
may  at  once  come  under  the  wholesome  influ- 
ence of  employment.  This  work  should  be  such 
as  can  be  easily  adapted  to  var)ing  physical 
capacities.  We  should  further  assure  our- 
selves that  the  work-shelters  are  kept  at  a  high 
standard  of  cleanliness  and  sanitation.  A  bath 
should  be  compulsory,  and  there  should  be 
proper  provision  for  the  destruction  of  vermin 


86  The  Good  Neighbor 

and  the  fumigation  of  clothing.  The  food  pro- 
vided should  he  plain,  plentiful  and  good  of  its 
kind.  These  inns  for  wounded  travellers  are 
sometimes  so  carelessly  managed,  so  uncleanly, 
that  the  victim  arrives  with  one  disease  and 
leaves  with  another;  and  it  is  unfortunately 
true  that  those  proclaiming  their  successorshlp 
to  the  Samaritan  the  loudest  are  often  the  worst 
offenders.  It  is  neighborly  to  assure  ourselves 
by  personal  visit,  if  necessary,  of  the  kind  of 
care  provided,  and  then  to  use  the  selected 
shelter  systematically  in  helping  homeless  men 
or  women. 

A  good  shelter  is  not  only  cleanly  and  pro- 
vided with  an  adequate  work-test  for  all  comers; 
we  should  also  expect  it  to  inquire  into  the  par- 
ticular problems  and  needs  of  each  inmate,  in 
order  to  seek  a  way  of  throwing  around  him  the 
'*more  ennobling  circumstances"  of  regular  work 
and  renewed  human  ties.  Work  in  the  labor 
market,  which  is  always  better  than  temporary 
and  "made"  work,  should  be  sought  for  the 
able-bodied  and  for  the  handicapped  who  are  not 
too  crippled  or  infirm  to  do  special  work  adapted 
to    their    capacities.     Younger    men    should    be 


The  Man  on  the  Street  87 

brought  in  touch  once  again  with  their  own  peo- 
ple. The  aged  often  have  relatives  able  to  care 
for  them,  and  these  should  be  sought  out.  The 
diseased  should  receive  prompt  and  adequate 
medical  care. 

And  all  of  this  programme,  leading  up  at  last 
to  the  supreme  gift  of  character,  needs  at  every 
turn  our  neighborly  help.  Institutions  for  the 
homeless  are  relatively  inefficient  unless  they 
have  learned  to  interest  young  men  in  the 
churches,  in  individual  inmates  whose  greatest 
need  is  to  be  sure  that  some  one  else  cares; 
unless  also  they  are  able  to  interest  business 
men  who  can  "lend  their  brains  out"  in  the 
search  for  industrial  chances.  And  for  every 
household  there  is  some  natural  and  easy  way 
of  helping.  Some  can  buy  the  product  of  the 
institution's  labor  or  woodyard,  some  can  fur- 
nish clothing  to  aid  in  a  plan  of  helping  a 
man  upward,  some  can  give  odd  jobs.  No  one 
need  feel  that  the  old  impulse  of  helpfulness 
has  been  checked  or  chilled  by  this  adjust- 
ment to  modern  needs. 

The   charitable   impulses   of  the   servants   of 
the  household  should  also  be  carried  over  into 


88  The  Good  Neighbor 

the  new  plans.  A  director  of  a  model  institu- 
tion for  wayfarers  was  sadly  bewildered  when 
he  discovered  that  one  of  his  own  housemaids 
was  feeding  all  comers  at  his  back  gate.  One 
institution  for  which  he  was  responsible,  namely, 
his  home,  was  defeating  the  object  of  another 
institution  to  which  he  was  giving  much  time 
and  thought.  But  maids  are  human:  they  will 
not  be  converted  by  the  maxims  of  political 
economy  nor  by  the  simple  word  of  command. 
The  positive  side  of  the  new  policy  must  be 
carefully  explained  to  them  and  then  patiently 
illustrated.  One  householder  always  explains 
to  her  maid  the  result  of  each  application  for 
help  received  at  the  door.  "You'll  never  get  to 
Heaven  by  giving  away  }our  mistress's  things," 
said  a  clear-sighted  priest  to  his  servant-girl 
congregation.  The  truth  was  so  pithily  put  that 
it  stuck.  The  truly  neighborly  household  will 
cultivate  in  its  servants  good  habits  of  neigh- 
borly service. 

It  has  been  said  that  a  few  of  those  who  are 
striving  to  aid  the  homeless  not  only  long  to 
know  the  whole  truth  about  them  as  the  best 


The  Man  on  the  Street  89 

way  of  getting  them  out  of  their  troubles,  but 
also  crave  this  knowledge  in  order  that  they  may 
discover  ways  in  which  our  modern  communities 
may  avoid  the  manufacture  of  an  increasing 
army  of  vagrants,  tramps  and  beggars.  This 
is  not  the  place  in  which  to  dwell  upon  the 
larger  preventive  and  repressive  measures  that 
must  be  advanced  side  by  side  with  the  educa- 
tion of  householders  in  their  contact  with  the 
homeless;  but,  as  the  householder  can  influence 
the  policy  of  police  departments  and  State  legis- 
latures, here  are  a  few  of  the  suggestions  made 
in  a  recent  study  of  "Vagrancy"  by  Orlando  F. 
Lewis  of  the  Joint  Application  Bureau,  New 
York,  which  should  be  borne  in  mind.  The 
police  will  show  more  intelligent  interest  in  the 
enforcement  of  the  laws  against  begging  when 
they  find  that  citizens  are  intelligently  interested. 

(/7)  Vagrants  trespassing  on  railroads  should  be 
arrested  and  imprisoned  at  hard  labor,  and  the 
press,  the  police,  and  the  magistrates  should  push 
to  secure  prompt  enforcement  of  the  laws  against 
trespass. 

(^)  In  cities  troubled  with  beggars  there  should 
be  at  least  one  special  mendicancy  officer  in  plain 


90  The  Good  Neighbor 

clothes,  and  arrests  should  be  followed  by  the 
prompt  punishment  of  habitual  offenders. 

(r)  Lodging-houses  maintained  by  charitable 
bodies  should  be  models  of  their  kind.  Missions 
giving  food  or  lodging  to  the  destitute  should  re- 
quire a  reasonable  amount  of  work  in  return.  The 
mission's  function  is  spiritual  regeneration.  Any 
method  that  renders  a  large  proportion  of  the  re- 
cipients hypocritical  or  slothful  is  obviously  wrong. 

(^d)  At  least  one  compulsory  labor  colony  for 
habitual  vagrants,  with  indeterminate  sentence, 
and  one  hospital  for  inebriates,  should  be  estab- 
lished in  each  State. 

Turning  from  the  homeless  to  resident  beg- 
gars, anyone  applying  at  the  door  who  can  give 
a  city  address  should  be  told  that  no  help  is 
ever  given  at  the  door,  but  that  some  one  will 
visit  promptly  and  try  to  help  in  the  applicant's 
own  home.  The  name  and  address  should  then 
be  telephoned  or  written  to  the  charity  organi- 
zation society  or  associated  charities,  together 
with  any  details  that  have  been  gathered  from 
the  applicant.  The  society  will  visit  within 
twenty-four  hours,  if  told  that  the  need  is  urgent, 
and  emergency  distress  will  be  relieved  at  once 
without   waiting    for    any    formality   whatever. 


The  Man  on  the  Street  91 

Plans  are  then  set  on  foot  for  the  more  adequate 
rehef  of  the  whole  family  by  methods  that  are 
described  in  the  next  chapter. 

Three  types  of  beggars  may  be  mentioned 
here  very  briefly;  namely,  begging  letter 
writers,  deformed  beggars  and  child  beggars. 

Old  stories  that  have  served  their  turn  with 
slight  variation  for  generations  are  still  the  stock 
in  trade  of  the  beggar.  Their  very  antiquity 
seems  to  give  them  a  sanctity  in  the  eyes  of 
many.  The  begging  letter  writer  has  the  dis- 
ease from  which  you  have  just  recovered,  or 
his  }oungest  child  is  named  after  you,  or  he 
needs  just  so  much  (almost  always  the  same 
sum)  to  put  him  beyond  the  need  of  charity 
forever,  or  a  mutual  friend  has  referred  him  to 
you,  or  he  had  a  great  admiration  for  a  near 
relative  of  yours  who  has  recently  died,  or  he 
has  dreamed  you  would  help  him,  or  a  hundred 
other  equally  improbable  things.  If  he  can 
convince  his  correspondent  that  he  has  written 
to  no  one  else,  he  is  fortunate.  But  such  com- 
munications should  be  carefully  followed  up 
and  their  writers  helped  on  the  basis  of  their 
real   needs  instead  of  their  alleged   needs. 


92  The  Good  Neighbor 

Of  another  class,  less  skilled  but  more  suc- 
cessful in  their  appeals,  the  blind  and  crippled, 
it  is  necessary  to  speak  frankly.  Every  human 
creature  hides  deformity  by  instinct.  When  we 
tempt  the  man  with  a  withered  hand  to  ex- 
hibit it  in  order  to  excite  our  sympathy,  we 
degrade  him,  and  it  is  quite  true  that  we  often 
find  the  deepest  moral  degradation  among  those 
beggars  who  are  also  physically  deformed. 
Industrial  homes  for  the  blind  testify  that  men 
leave  these  institutions  to  beg  on  the  streets 
because  they  can  make  more  money  and  have 
more  free  time  for  debauchery.  "  Blind  beg- 
gars," writes  the  head  of  a  large  school  for  the 
blind,  "are  a  real  menace  to  the  success  of  our 
work,  for  their  existence  renders  the  independ- 
ence of  self-respecting  blind  people  more  diffi- 
cult to  maintain. "  It  is  not  enough  to  deny 
the  blind  our  alms,  we  must  push  on  to  secure 
their  better  industrial  training  and  to  secure  for 
them  individual  chances  of  employment,*  but 
when  we  do  not  interest  ourselves  in  this  thor- 


*  Those  who  are  interested  in  the  adult  blind  will  find  a  valuable 
article  on  their  industrial  aid  in  Charities  and  the  Commons^  Vol. 
XVII,  p.  405,  sq. 


The  Man  on  the  Street  93 

ough  way,  we  are  too  apt  to  hinder  all  who  do 
by  giving  our  small  change  at  the  door  or  on  the 
street.  An  offer  to  double  whatever  he  might 
earn  and  to  train  him  to  earn  it  was  indig- 
nantly refused  by  one  blind  man  known  to  me, 
and  he  still  parades  the  streets  with  his  wife, 
attracting  crowds  on  the  corners. 

Cripples  are  almost  always  employable  unless 
their  deformities  are  very  unusual.  One,  who 
claimed  never  to  have  slept  in  the  same  place 
for  more  than  two  nights  in  succession  in 
twenty  years,  has  now  earned  his  living  and 
slept  in  the  same  place — a  cleanly  place — for 
months.  The  local  charity  organization  so- 
ciety will  usually  try  to  find  work  for  any  cripple 
who  can  be  persuaded  to  accept  it. 

It  is  difficult  to  speak  without  bitterness  of 
the  practice  of  giving  money  or  goods  to  chil- 
dren who  beg  at  the  door  or  on  the  street. 
Behind  every  such  appeal  there  are  a  hundred 
needs  to  be  met,  not  one;  and  they  are  not  met, 
they  are  only  more  successfully  hidden,  by  the 
help  of  the  moment. 

No  charitable  society  that  is  worthy  of  the 
name    seeks    to    substitute    its    machinery    for 


Q4  The  Good  Neighbor 

personal  charity.  Charity  cannot  be  too  per- 
sonal, but,  on  the  other  hand,  it  must  be  co- 
operative and  intelligent.  "After  I  had  come 
to  avail  myself  of  this  society,"  said  a  New 
York  clergyman,  speaking  of  the  New  York 
Charity  Organization  Society, 

there  came  to  me  one  of  those  cases  **I 
knew  all  about"  and  it  was  not  necessary  for 
me  to  investigate  it  at  all.  When  he  came  and 
asked  me  for  ten  dollars  and  a  month  or  so  later 
for  five,  in  a  dreadful  emergency,  and  again  and 
again  for  ten,  I  went  on  giving  it,  feeling  that  I 
was  acting  as  a  special  providence  to  relieve 
genteel  poverty ;  until,  after  a  year  or  two,  a 
missive  came  that  somehow  or  other  excited  my 
suspicion,  and  I  said,  **  I  will  go  to  the  office  of 
the  Charity  Organization  Society,"  and  I  went, 
half  despising  myself  for  suspecting  these  people 
I  "  knew  all  about."  And  after  applying  to  one 
of  the  ladies  in  charge  and  putting  her  under 
bonds  of  secrecy,  finally  I  said,  "Will  you  tell 
me  whether  you  have  this  name  anywhere  on 
your  list  ?"  She  vanished  and  in  the  course  of 
a  little  time  came  in  and  brought  me  some  letters 
— about  half  a  peck,  I  should  think — that  were 
very  nearly  facsimiles  of  the  one  I  had  in  my 


The  Man  on  the  Street  95 

hand,  written  by  the  same  person  ;  and  I  never 
realized  before  what  a  circle  I  moved  in.  So 
after  that  I  concluded  I  had  better  make  some 
inquiries  in  reference  to  those  cases  I  "  knew  all 
about." 

The  addresses  of  the  wayfarers'  lodge  or 
municipal  lodging-house,  of  the  charity  organi- 
zation society,  and  of  the  missions  having  a 
good  work-test,  will  be  needed  in  order  to  help 
applicants  at  the  door  effectively.  In  some 
cities  homeless  women  are  provided  for  at  the 
lodges,  and  in  others  there  is  a  shelter  under 
other  management  for  them.  For  the  care  of 
stubborn  offenders,  who  are  known  to  make 
false  pretenses  or  to  give  false  addresses,  police 
headquarters  should  be  called  up.  Many  per- 
sons are  discouraged  from  trying  to  get  the 
names  and  addresses  of  resident  beggars  be- 
cause so  often,  when  these  are  reported  to  the 
charity  organization  society,  they  prove  to  be 
false;  but  the  practice  should  be  continued, 
for  the  cumulative  evidence  thus  gathered 
sometimes  makes  it  possible  for  the  society  to 
stop  the  begging  and  help  the  beggar.  It  is 
not  safe  to  assume  that  anyone  in  need,  however 


96  The  Good  Neighbor 

well  educated  and  respectable,  is  unknown  tc 
the  society,  which  treats  all  classes  and  guards 
the  confidence  of  its  clients  with  great  care. 
No  visit  will  be  paid  by  the  society  if  requested 
not  to  visit,  but  it  is  always  well  to  inquire 
whether  applicants  are  registered  at  its  central 
office. 


VII 

The  Family  in  Distress. 

A  WORKER  in  a  large  city  charity  that  deals 
■^  ^  yearly  with  thousands  of  families  in  distress 
looks  back  with  no  small  degree  of  envy  upon 
the  time  when  the  place  was  simple  and  village- 
like. Deeds  of  charity  were  then  relatively  easy 
and  natural,  for  the  best  way  to  help  people 
is  to  know  them  before  they  need  help,  to  know 
them  as  employees,  neighbors,  fellow  church 
members  and  fellow  citizens  who  have  duties 
and  pleasures  in  common  with  ourselves. 

But  the  village  grew  into  a  town,  wealth  and 
poverty  grew  with  it,  fu'>ds  were  created  to 
take  the  place  of  the  old  ijeighborhood  help — 
soup  funds,  fuel  funds,  clothing  funds — and 
these  dole  charities,  relatively  safe  at  first  when 
the  numbers  were  still  small  and  conditions 
easily  within  the  understanding  of  a  few  volun- 
teer dispensers,  became  veritable  engines  of 
destruction  to  the  poor  whom  they  were  in- 
tended to  help,  when  village  changed  from 
7  97 


98  The  Good  Neighbor 

town  to  city,  and  the  city  became  a  great  magnet 
drawing  many  workers  away  from  the  country 
districts  and  away  from  overseas.  Rehef  that 
keeps  casual  laborers  in  the  city  w'hen  there  is 
no  steady  demand  for  their  labor  is  not  neigh- 
borly; relief  that  makes  it  possible  for  them  to 
work  for  less  and  so  underbid  the  man  who 
asks  no  help  is  not  neighborly;  relief  that  en- 
courages a  weak  woman  to  leave  her  son's 
home  and  come  down  into  the  furnished  room 
and  saloon  district  on  a  long  debauch  is  not 
neighborly;  relief  that  helps  a  man  to  come 
and  go  at  will  as  the  whim  seizes  him  with  the 
assurance  that  his  family  will  be  cared  for 
meanwhile  is  not  neighborly.  But  often  the 
funds  that  work  this  mischief  were  created 
before  the  days  of  sharp  industrial  competi- 
tion, before  the  days  of  the  Tenderloin  and  of 
railroad  vagrancy;  and  their  trustees  continue 
unchanged  the  methods  of  what  may  be  called 
the  "town  period"  of  relief,  they  go  on  dis- 
tributing fuel  and  grocery  orders  during  the 
winter  months  to  applicants  with  whose  real 
circumstances  and  real  needs  they  have  very 
slight   acquaintance. 


The  Family  in  Distress  99 

What  is  the  remedy  ?  It  is  found  in  a  return 
— laborious  and  awkward  at  first,  it  ma}-  be, 
but  still  a  return — to  the  village  ideal.  To 
relieve  distress  the  city  must  be  broken  up  into 
workable  districts,  small  enough  to  be  known 
and  understood  thoroughly  by  charity  workers 
selected  for  their  devotion  and  intellig-ence. 
Whenever  a  case  of  family  distress  previously 
unknown  comes  to  light,  whether  through  an 
application  to  a  church,  a  private  residence 
miles  away  or  a  down-town  business  house, 
the  matter  should  be  reported  at  once  to  the 
district  office  in  which  the  family  lives;  and  the 
citizen  so  reporting  should  be  assured  that  a 
visit  will  be  paid  from  that  office  to  the  home 
of  the  applicant  within  twenty-four  hours  with- 
out fail,  that  prompt  measures  will  be  taken 
to  meet  the  immediate  need,  and  that  then 
without  a  moment's  delay  connection  will  be 
made  with  those  who  knew  the  family  before 
they  were  in  need.  This  may  require  visits 
widely  scattered;  it  may  require  correspond- 
ence with  San  Francisco,  or  Georgia,  or  Maine; 
it  may  require  careful  planning  on  the  part  of 
a  good   many  different   people  and  the  calling 


100  The  Good  Neighbor 

in,  for  unbefriended  cases,  of  a  charitable 
stranger  who  will  undertake  to  visit  regularly 
and  be  neighborly  (what  is  called  a  friendly 
visitor);  but  it  is  only  the  old-fashioned  village 
ideal  translated  into  modern  terms  and  adapted 
to  city  conditions. 

In  our  efforts  to  deal  thoroughly  with  applica- 
tions for  help  from  strangers  the  use  of  an  agency 
working  on  this  plan  involves  no  delay  or  suffer- 
ing. The  society  for  organizing  charity  or  charity 
organization  society  or  associated  charities,  as  it 
is  variously  called  in  different  cities,  may  have 
developed  somewhat  different  methods  of  work 
in  different  places,  and  in  some  the  district  system 
will  have  been  better  developed  than  in  others, 
but  everywhere  such  a  society  guarantees  a  prompt 
visit  and  adequate  care.  Emergency  distress  is 
relieved  at  once  from  the  nearest  grocery  or  coal 
bin  without  waiting  to  report  to  the  inquirer,  and 
then  larger  plans  for  help  are  developed  in  which 
those  who  referred  the  applicant  will  be  asked  to 
bear  and  usually  will  bear  a  part. 

That  kodak  charity  which  says  in  effect, 
"Subscribe  to  us  and  we'll  protect  you  from 
the  poor,  we'll  do  the  rest,"  is  still  working  in 


The  Family  in  Distress  ioi 

the  sordid  "town  period"  of  charitable  develop- 
ment. It  is  anti-religious  in  the  sense  that  it 
acts  as  one  more  barrier  where  there  are  al- 
ready too  many  between  the  well-to-do  and  the 
poor.  The  agency  that  seeks  to  divide  chari- 
table burdens  wisely,  on  the  other  hand,  using 
each  citizen's  capacity  for  affection  and  neigh- 
borliness  and  using  it  to  the  best  advantage, 
wins  its  way  back  at  once  to  everything  that 
was  best  in  the  old  "village  period"  of  relief. 

Such  an  agency  will  not  attempt  to  replace 
the  church  in  any  way.  Wherever  church 
relations  have  been  severed  it  will  seek  to 
restore  them;  wherever  several  churches  of 
several  denominations  are  working  at  cross 
purposes  without  knowing  it,  and  dealing  with 
the  same  family,  it  will  seek  to  bring  them 
together  and  secure  either  concerted  action  or 
a  shifting  of  the  burden  to  the  right  shoulders. 
And  in  all  this  it  will   avoid   proselytizing. 

There  are  four  indispensable  features  of  the 
district  s)stcm  of  aiding  families. 

( I )  An  efficient  district  superintendent  or  secre- 
tary, who  gives  his  or  her  whole  time  to  the  work. 


102  The  Good  Neighbor 

(2)  A  live  district  committee  or  conference, 
meeting  weekly  and  having  in  its  membership 
those  who  are  also  actively  connected  with  the 
church  charities,  the  medical  charities,  and  the 
other  agencies  dealing  with  family  distress  in  the 
district.  Such  a  conference,  when  well  organ- 
ized, combines  neighborly  interest  with  a  wide 
variety  of  community  knowledge.  It  is  willing  to 
think  hard  about  what  ought  to  be  done  for  A  and 
B  and  C,  and  no  problem  that  concerns  a  human 
being's  welfare  seems  to  it  trifling  or  unimportant. 
The  more  kinds  of  people  represented  on  such  a 
committee,  the  more  valuable  its  judgments  become. 

(3)  Volunteer  or  friendly  visitors  serving  on 
the  committee  and  also  visiting  individual  families 
in  which  the  committee's  plans  can  only  be 
carried  out  by  continuous  and  friendly  contact. 

(4)  Closest  relations  between  all  these  district 
workers  and  the  central  society,  which  should 
connect  the  neighborhood  needs  and  the  neighbor- 
hood points  of  view  with  the  larger  needs  of  the 
community,  and  then  work  persistently  for  the 
legislative  and  administrative  reforms  that  arc  found 
in  all  this  careful,  detailed  service  to  be  practical. 

Such  a  society  cannot  prosper  without  a  truly 
neighborly  spirit  among  both  its  paid  and  volun- 


The  Family  in  Distress  103 

teer  workers.  The  older  t)'pe  of  charity  agent 
sat  at  a  desk  and  divided  the  poor  into  the 
"worthy"  and  the  "unworthy,"  giving  the 
former  small  grocery  orders  and  sending  the 
latter  about  their  business.  The  new  type  of 
worker,  whether  serving  as  a  church  or  charity 
visitor,  is  sympathetic,  ready  and  willing  to 
work  hard  with  the  so-called  undeserving; 
resourceful  in  cases  where  material  relief  alone 
is  not  enough;  knowing  like  a  book  the  district 
in  which  he  or  she  works — its  schools,  its 
doctors,  its  clergymen,  its  industrial  opportun- 
ities, its  charitable  people;  and  quick  to  use  all 
of  these  in  giving  poor  people  a  lift  upward. 

Several  years  'kgo  a  school  teacher  applied 
to  me  for  training  looking  to  a  district  super- 
intendency.  She  was  advised  to  write  to  an 
old  college  friend  who  was  engaged  in  charity 
organization  work  in  another  city.  The  reply 
was  so  helpful  that  part  of  it  is  given  here. 

....  About  the  work.  I  have  found  it  most 
interesting  and  inspiring — a  splendid  opportunity 
for  a  usefial,  happy  life,  and  a  better  opportunity 
to  grow  myself  and  to  learn  all  sorts  of  valuable 
lessons.      The  work  differs  in  different  cities,  so 


104  The  Good  Neighbor 

I  cannot  give  you  any  specific  advice  about  Phila- 
delphia ;    I    can    only  tell   you    about   my    own 

experience You    must    make    up-  your 

mind  before  you  go  into  the  work  that  you  can 
like  or  learn  to  like  both  rich  and  poor,  and 
Catholic  and  Protestant,  and  Jew  and  Gentile, 
for  you  will  have  them  all  to  deal  with.  You 
must  be  ready  to  work  also  with  unpleasant  and 
pleasant  people,  and,  above  all,  your  own  faith 
in  the  beneficence  of  God's  way  in  the  world 
must  be  so  strong  that  you  will  not  easily  be  dis- 
couraged and  bowed  down  with  all  the  misery 
you  will  see.  You  must  be  able  to  see  the  good 
through  it  all.  I  do  not  want  to  frighten  you — 
it  is  a  strenuous  life,  but,  at  the  same  time,  a 
wonderfully  satisfying  life.  .  z^.  .  In  many  ways 
it  is  broader  than  teaching  can  ever  be,  for  we 
deal  with  all  ages  and  classes,  and  all  sorts  of  prob- 
lems, physical,  spiritual  and  mental. 

This  is  a  high  standard  of  professional  ser- 
vice, but  it  has  been  my  privilege  to  know 
many  who  have  lived  up  to  it,  and  such  pro- 
fessional charity  agents  inevitably  attract  around 
them  volunteer  workers  of  a  very  high  grade. 

Some  of  these  volunteers  come  as  beginners, 
as   friendly   visitor*   to  two  or  three   families, 


The  Family  in  Distress  105 

feeling  somewhat  strange,  at  first,  not  sure  of 
a  welcome  and  shrinking  a  little  from  sights  to 
whidi  they  are  unaccustomed.  But  the  late  Pro- 
fessor Shaler  has  pointed  out  a  very  encouraging 
fact  about  human  beings.     He  tells  us  that 

The  revolt  we  feel  at  the  sight  of  a  man  who 
is  grievously  wounded,  or  has  any  sore  affliction 
which  makes  him  appear  abnormal,  passes  away 
as  soon  as  we  lay  a  helpful  hand  on  his  body. 
Something  of  this  dissipation  of  the  instinctive 
prejudice  to  the  apparently  inhuman  nature  of  the 
neighbor  will  take  place  when  a  person  of  well- 
trained  sympathies  ....  vigorously  goes  forth 
to  the  sufferer  by  an  exercise  of  the  will. 

Contact  is  indeed  the  cure  for  many  wounds 
and  for  many  prejudices,  and  one  who  has  had 
the  privilege  for  years  of  introducing  friendly 
visitors  to  families  at  some  time  of  crisis  or 
especial  distress  can  testify  that  in  the  perma- 
nent relation  thus  often  established  the  healing 
and  help  are  never  all  on  one  side.  "If  we  could 
only  make  people  realize,"  wrote  a  volunteer 
visitor  recently  in  a  letter, 

that  the  work  of  friendly  visiting  is  so  arranged 
that  one  can  do  a  little  and  have  one's  effort* 


io6  The  Good  Neighbor 

count,  and  that  it  offers  an  opportunity  at  our 
very  doors  to  do  something  for  someone  e'se  in 
the  best  possible  way  without  interfering  with 
any  other  interests  one  may  have! 

One  fine  thing  about  doing  such  work  in  con- 
nection with  a  charity  organization  society  is  that 
the  visitor  starts  out  upon  her  relations  with  the 
family  upon  such  a  sure  basis.  I  cannot  think  of 
an  instance  where  anything  but  cordiality  existed 
from  the  start.  Then  do  you  think  that  people 
realize  what  a  field  there  is  for  purely  friendly 
relations  after  the  professional  charity  worker  has 
done  everything  she  possibly  could  ?  You  know 
of  so  many  families  where  excellent  work  is  done 
that  I  hate  to  take  a  minute  to  give  a  special 
instance,  but  no  efforts,  I  am  sure,  except  those 
of  friends  could  have  kept  the  B.  family  together. 
It  took  two  of  us,  one  in  New  York  and  one 
here,  but  the  family  is  still  together  and  doing 
well  at  last,  even  weathering  a  trip  West  after 
the  possibility  of  a  second  desertion  on  the  part 
of  the  father. 

It  takes  neither  money  nor  worldly  goods  of 
any  kind  to  become  such  a  visitor,  and  people 
of  very  diverse  social  experience  are  able  to  do 
the  work  well.    The  next   five  extracts,  for  in- 


The  Family  in  Distress  107 

stance,  are  taken  in  turn  from  the  letters  of 
friendly  visitors,  two  of  whom  are  married 
women,  two  spinsters,  and  one  a  widow. 

Perhaps  it  has  not  occurred  to  you  how  great 
an  influence  this  "friendly  visiting"  work  may 
have  in  the  home  of  the  visitor.  For  years  we 
as  a  family  have  talked  and  planned  concerning 
the  families  I  have  called  upon,  and  besides  get- 
ting us  acquainted  with  the  best  methods  of  help- 
ing others  it  has  had  a  broadening  effect  upon 
our  own  lives.  My  husband  has  been  instru- 
mental in  reclaiming  the  drunkard  whom  I  have 
spoken  of  in  this  letter. 

I  think  one  of  the  great  helps  of  visiting  is 
that  it  gives  one  a  truer  sense  of  proportion. 
This  is  especially  true  of  mothers  of  young  chil- 
dren who  are  apt  to  think  the  world  revolves 
around  their  own  individual  child.  My  family 
consists  of  a  widow  and  nine  children,  and  it  is 
very  inspiring  to  me  in  coping  with  my  four 
children  to  see  how  wonderfully  the  widow  with 
every  handicap  manages  her  nine. 

The  work  is  pecuHarly  fruitful  to  the  childless 
person,  for  it  brings  love  and  the  dependence  of 
litde  ones  into  her  life. 


io8  The  Good  Neighbor 

I  am  as  proud  of  my  little  girls'  progress  in 
school  as  if  they  had  been  my  own!  While, 
when  my  friends  moved  into  a  better  house 
where  the  sun  really  found  them,  and  bought 
with  their  savings  an  ^  i  8  set  of  furniture,  I  felt 
as  if  I  had  come  into  a  fortune  myself!  Then, 
when  my  friend  was  ill,  and  all  her  poor,  hard- 
worked  neighbors  gave  of  their  scant  time  and 
means  to  help  her,  as  many  of  my  friends  would 
not  have  done  for  me  in  like  case — I  realized 
more  what  real  sympathy  meant  and  learned 
another  lesson. 

V/hat  have  I  gained  by  the  work,  and  what  has 
it  meant  to  me,  you  ask  ?  It  has  broadened  my 
whole  life ;  it  has  given  me  work  to  do  when  a 
personal  sorrow  claimed  my  thoughts.  And  it 
has  gained  for  me,  I  know,  one  very  loyal  friend 
among  the  poor. 

And  these  two  must  close  citations  that 
might  be  indefinitely  extended  from  letters  in 
my  possession: 

I  have  done  enough  visiting,  and  for  years 
enough,  to  have  reaped  the  veteran's  exceeding 
great  reward.  I  have  seen  results,  I  have  watched 
pauper-born  children  develop  into  good  citizens. 

My  chosen  families  are  now  in  the  third  gen- 
eration and  look  after  me. 


The  Family  in  Distress   ,        109 

Who  could  hope  to  develop  any  but  the  most 
artificial  and  unfruitful  relations  with  a  family,  it 
may  be  asked,  when  the  introduction  is  made 
through  a  society  r  It  is  indeed  deplorable 
that  any  families  should  be  friendless,  and  that 
any  visitors  should  be  without  natural  oppor- 
tunities for  making  friends  among  the  poor 
under  conditions  self-respecting  for  both;  but 
an  introduction  through  a  district  committee 
has  the  advantage  that  a  good  reason  is  al- 
ways found  for  the  initial  visits,  that  no  one 
will  be  sent  to  families  already  overvisited,  and 
that  workers  of  more  experience  stand  ready 
to  advise  and  help.  There  is  absolutely  no 
"pushing  in,"  and  the  friendliest,  most  attrac- 
tive relations  are  often  formed.  The  best 
argument  for  such  visiting  is  in  the  practical 
help  to  the  visited,  though  the  help  is  very 
far  from   being  all    on  their  side. 

"  Why,"  said  a  judge  to  a  woman  who  had 
just  told  her  tale  of  long-endured  abuse  from  a 
brutal  husband,  ''why  didn't  you  come  to  me 
before?"  "Because,"  said  the  woman,  turn- 
ing to  her  friendly  visitor,  "  I  never  had  a  friend 
till  now."      An  Italian  is  in  the  habit  of  bring- 


no  The  Good  Neighbor 

ing  to  his  visitor,  who  speaks  his  language,  a/1  his 
compatriots  in  distress,  in  the  simple  faith  that 
there  is  no  difficulty  too  great  for  her  to  solve. 

**  Won't  you  go  and  see  Mrs.  ?"  wrote  a 

poor  woman,  removed  to  another  city,  to  her 
former  visitor.  "  I  have  just  heard  that  she  has 
lost  her  husband,  and  you  used  to  do  me  so  much 
good  when  I  was  in  trouble."  And  of  this 
same  visitor  an  elderly  cripple  said,  "  It  makes 
me  feel  better  just  to  see  her  come  in." 

This  thorough,  patient  treatment  of  each 
individual  case  of  distress,  this  bringing  to  it 
an  open  mind,  an  open  heart,  and  a  willingness 
to  follow  wherever  the  facts  clearly  lead,  though 
they  lead  to  the  ends  of  the  earth,  develops 
many  new  and  larger  ways  of  helping.  At  first 
we  think  that  we  are  dealing  with  a  family 
in  temporary  distress;  soon  we  discover  that 
the  distress  is  caused  in  part  by  bad  sanitation, 
and  still  more  by  the  community's  neglect  of 
the  feeble-minded,  of  cripples,  or  of  working 
children;  we  have  picked  up  one  end  of  a  tan- 
gled skein  and  almost  before  we  know  it  we  are 
involved  in  a  local  or  even  a  national  campaign 
for   the   eradication  of  a  whole  group  of  pre- 


The  Family  in  Distress  hi 

veritable  causes  of  distress.  It  Is  in  this  way 
that  societies  organized  on  the  district  plan  for 
the  more  effective  treatment  of  families  in  need 
have  become  the  promoters  of  health  crusades 
such  as  those  for  pure  milk  and  against  tuber- 
culosis, have  been  the  pioneers  in  securing 
better  tenement  laws  and  better  inspection, 
have  worked  hard  for  compulsory  education 
and  against  child  labor,  and  are  thoroughly 
committed  to  the  advancement  of  a  number 
of  other  practical  reforms  growing  directly  out 
of  their  first-hand  exoerience  with  distress  and 
its  causes. 

It  may  seem  a  far  cry  from  this  complex 
arrangement  of  district  offices,  district  superin- 
tendents, district  committees,  friendly  visitors, 
housing  reform  committees  and  sanitary  com- 
mittees, to  the  simple  story  of  the  robbed 
traveller,  the  Samaritan,  and  the  innkeeper. 
But,  rightly  understood,  these  changes  are  made 
necessary  by  our  changed  living  conditions; 
results  are  still  the  same.  The  whole  duty  of 
the  Samaritan  could  not  be  delegated,  nor  can 
ours.  He  touched  the  wounded  man,  minis- 
tered to   him,  was   trul\'  ntigliborh-;    and   then. 


112  The  Good  Neighbor 

where  his  own  personal  resources  failed  and  his 
own  personal  affairs  made  renewed  demands 
upon  his  time,  he  sought  the  co-operation  of 
the  innkeeper.  The  charity  organization  society 
is  one  of  the  modern  innkeepers,  and  one  of 
the  most  useful  of  them. 

The  most  important  addresses  in  connection 
with  this  chapter  are  those  of  the  central  office 
of  the  charity  organization  society  and  of  its 
nearest  district  office.  A  St.  Vincent  de  Paul 
Society  is  usually  organized  in  each  Roman 
Catholic  parish;  there  are  societies  for  the 
relief  of  various  nationalities,  often  a  general 
relief  society  also,  and  a  Hebrew  relief  society 
to  which  Jewish  applicants  should  be  referred. 


VIII 
The  Invalid. 

/'^XLY  those  who  have  been  brought  to  very 
^■^^  close  quarters  with  distress  reaUze  how 
large  a  part  is  played  by  disease  in  the  tragedy 
of  the  poor.  There  would  be  something  heroic 
about  the  patience  with  which  physical  ill- 
being  is  accepted  by  them  as  the  common  lot 
if  this  were  not  a  part  of  a  larger  fatalism. 
They  have  had  no  vision  of  health,  no  realizing 
sense  of  what  a  condition  of  well-being  means. 
Every  other  cause  of  poverty  in  the  long  and 
dreary  list  brings  sickness  in  its  train.  This 
would  be  an  overwhelmingly  depressing  thought 
if  the  means  of  curing  and  preventing  disease 
had  not  been  multiplied  a  hundred-fold  during 
the  last  fifty  years. 

A  passage  in  one  of  Dr.  Osier's  addresses 
quotes  John  Henry  Newman  as  saying  "Who 
can  weigh  and  measure  the  aggregate  of  pain 
which  this  one  generation  has  endured  from 
birth  to  death  ?  Then  add  to  this  all  the  pain 
8  113 


114  The  Good  Neighbor 

which  has  fallen  and  will  fall  upon  our  race 
through  centuries  to  come."  In  sharp  contrast 
to  the  mood  of  the  great  cardinal,  the  great 
doctor  asks  us  to  turn  this  about  and  consider 
how  much  pain  has  been  prevented  by  the 
discoveries  of  medicine  in  the  last  fifty  years. 
He  even  ventures  to  declare  that  the  aggregate 
of  pain  which  has  been  prevented  outweighs  in 
civilized  communities  that  which  has  been  suf- 
fered. This  seems  at  first  reading  a  too  opti- 
mistic view,  but  when  one  considers  the  use  of 
anaesthetics,  the  control  of  epidemics,  the  wonder- 
ful advances  of  aseptic  surgery,  and  the  begin- 
nings of  effective  sanitation,  it  is  not  the  state- 
ment that  seems  so  much  at  fault  as  one's  own 
imagination,  which  cannot  grasp  the  facts  at 
first  in  all  their  cheering  significance. 

Sin  causes  disease  and  will  continue  to  cause 
it,  but  disease  also  causes  sin,  and  in  a  world 
from  which,  through  the  heroism  of  many 
unheralded  students,  much  of  the  preventable 
disease  shall  have  been  eradicated,  spiritual 
forces  will  for  the  first  time  in  this  earth's 
history  be  able  to  do  their  work  of  healing  in 
a  free  medium. 


The  Invalid  115 

During  the  next  fifty  years,  therefore,  no 
aspect  of  neighborhness  can  be  more  important 
than  that  which  seeks  to  improve  the  health 
of  the  people.  One  who  would  hasten  the 
coming  of  Christ's  Kingdom  upon  earth  should 
strive  to  realize  the  many  roads  by  which 
health,  in  its  largest  meaning,  may  be  brought 
into  the  homes  of  the  lowliest,  and  won  at  last 
to  dwell  there  not  fitfully  but  as  an  abiding 
blessing.  "I  am  come,"  said  the  Master,  "that 
they  might  have  life  and  that  they  might  have 
it  more  abundantly. "  That  such  life  may  flow 
abundantly  over  pain-racked  nerves,  trans- 
forming suffering  into  the  gateway  of  Heaven, 
we  have  seen  and  know.  But  pain  destroys 
more  often  than  it  quickens;  the  compassionate 
heart  of  the  Good  Samaritan  knew  this  and 
hastened  to  bring  oil  and  wine  and  the  shelter 
of  the  inn  to  the  wounded  man. 

Between  those  simple  means  and  the  elabo- 
rate contrivances  of  modern  surgery  the  art  of 
healing  has  travelled  a  long  way;  but  still, 
as  one  goes  in  and  out  of  the  courts  and  alleys, 
their  inhabitants  often  seem  as  cut  off  from 
the  means  of  succor  as  though  they  lay  wounded 


ii6  The  Good  Neighbor 

in  the  wilderness  of  Judea,  for  near  as  this  means 
often  is  in  the  modern  city  their  ignorance  and 
ours  still  cuts  them  off.  So  little  are  available 
resources  understood  and  turned  to  account 
that  Samaritans  are  still  sadly  needed  to  make 
the  connection. 

Everyone  can  help  and  that  without  going 
more  than  a  few  steps  out  of  his  way,  by  keep- 
ing at  hand  in  this  little  book  or  elsewhere  the 
few  addresses  that  are  needed  to  secure  prompt 
succor  for  the  sick.  The  dispensary,  the  hospital, 
the  visiting  nurse,  the  sick  diet  kitchen,  the 
modified  milk  station,  should  all  be  within  call 
when  it  falls  to  the  lot  of  any  one  of  us  to  make 
the  connection,  and  where  we  are  puzzled  to 
find  just  the  best  fit  in  any  given  case  there  is 
always  the  charity  organization  society  to  help  us. 

In  so  far  as  we  have  any  influence  with  in- 
valids, we  may  use  it  to  see  that  the  earlier 
symptoms  of  illness  are  promptly  heeded,  that 
quack  remedies  and  inefficient  doctors  are 
avoided,  and  that  the  sick  do  not  return  to  work 
too  soon.  Our  present  medical  resources  are 
often  quite  adequate  to  effect  a  cure,  but  they 
are    so    unintelligently    used    that    many    times 


The  Invalid  117 

they  are  wasted.  Prompt  use  of  the  best  re- 
sources may  save  weeks  and  years  of  ill-health. 
And  when  the  hospital  or  dispensary  has 
brought  the  patient  to  convalescence,  we  can- 
not do  a  more  neighborly  thing  than  to  see  that, 
instead  of  permitting  him  to  return  to  work 
prematurely,  his  health  is  established  by  good 
convalescent  care,  preferably  in  the  country. 
Two  weeks'  board  on  a  farm  or  in  a  home  for 
convalescents  will  make  every  difference  in  a 
workinff  man's  or  woman's  chances  of  com- 
plete  recovery. 

A  neighborly  care  for  the  health  of  the  whole 
people  may  well  begin  in  one's  own  household. 
To  take  the  simplest  illustration,  stagnant 
water,  even  in  an  old  can,  breeds  mosquitoes 
and  mosquitoes  spread  disease.  Care  about 
garbage  disposal  and  about  the  cleanliness  of 
our  own  street,  whether  we  are  away  in  the 
dustier  seasons  or  not;  a  determination  to 
pollute  neither  the  air  nor  the  water  by  home 
processes  or  by  those  commercial  processes  for 
which  we  are  responsible;  the  provision  of 
well-ventilated  sleeping  rooms  for  our  servants 
— a  nice  sense  of  the  relation  of  all  these  homely 


ii8  The  Good  Neighbor 

things  to  patriotism  and  to  religion  is  the  basis 
upon  which  the  welfare  of  our  neighbors  finally 
rests. 

Among  the  diseases  that  we  now  know  how 
to  prevent — dysentery,  typhoid,  yellow  fever, 
&c., — the  one  that  has  caused  the  greatest  suf- 
fering and  mortality  is  tuberculosis.  The 
crusade  against  tuberculosis  illustrates  admir- 
ably the  fundamental  difference  between  the 
effectual  and  the  ineffectual  way  of  dealing 
with  distress.  We  have  seen  that  the  period 
of  many  funds,  the  "town  period"  of  relief, 
touched  no  cause  of  poverty  without  aggravat- 
ing it.  It  encouraged  child  labor,  overcrowd- 
ing, and  all  the  social  evils  that  cause  tuber- 
culosis; it  then  cared  for  the  tuberculous  patient 
and  his  family  in  such  a  way  as  to  spread  the 
disease,  or  else  it  sent  him  away  to  a  more 
healthful  climate  so  inadequately  provided  with 
means  to  assure  rest  and  treatment  that  he 
soon  died. 

We  learn  slowly  and  then  still  more  slowly 
we  apply  what  we  learn.  As  early  as  1839,  an 
English  physician  advocated  nutritious  food, 
fresh  air  and  constant  supervision  in  the  treat- 


The  Invalid  119 

ment  of  consumption;  Koch  discovered  the 
tubercle  bacillus  in  1882;  but  not  until  1902, 
when  the  New  York  Charity  Organization 
Society  organized  its  Committee  on  the  Pre- 
vention of  Tuberculosis,  did  we  begin  in  this 
country  an  active  popular  campaign  to  secure 
adequate  treatment  looking  to  cure  for  poor 
consumptives,  and  to  impress  upon  all  the 
people  the  communicable  and  curable  nature  of 
the  disease. 

The  crusade  thus  begun  is  going  to  educate 
our  countrymen  in  habits  that  will  prevent  not 
only  tuberculosis  but  many  other  forms  of 
disease. 

Before  long,  the  town  or  country  house  will 
seem  badly  built  that  does  not  provide  upper 
porches  for  sleeping  outdoors,  and  that  does  not 
secure  the  greatest  possible  allowance  of  sunlight 
for  living  and  sleeping  rooms.  We  shall  learn  to 
give  preference  to  those  fabrics  that  do  not  catch 
or  hold  the  dust.  We  shall  make  short  shrift  of 
the  board  of  health  that  passes  diseased  cattle  or 
impure  milk.  We  shall  give  larger  powers  to 
such  boards  in  order  that  they  may  not  only  con- 
trol the  movements  of  tuberculous  patients  who 


120  The  Good  Neighbor 

are  careless  in  their  personal  habits,  but  may  pro- 
vide places  for  their  proper  care.  We  shall  insist 
upon  the  prompt  disinfection  of  all  rooms  in 
which  such  patients  have  lived.  Wc  shall  learn 
to  seek  expert  advice  in  the  earliest  symptoms  of 
the  disease,  and  shall  secure  healthful  employ- 
ments for  those  who  have  been  cured.  We  shall 
learn  the  value  of  the  simplest  foods.  We  shall 
learn  that  these  things  are  far  more  important  than 
medicines,  though  a  great  physician  declares  that 
man  is  the  only  animal  born  with  a  thirst  for 
drugs. 

And  most  of  this  newly  acquired  wisdom  will 
bring  increased  well-being  to  those  who  are  not 
sick.  When  it  does,  let  them  remember  that 
they  owe  their  new  blessings  to  those  who 
strove  to  imitate  the  Good  Samaritan  and 
succor  the  wounded  traveller.  Anything  done 
now  to  help  this  particular  cause,  which  is  a 
battle  not  yet  won  but  soon  to  be,  is  a  contribu- 
tion toward  the  welfare  of  the  whole  human  race. 

The  newly  aroused  interest  in  all  matters 
affecting  health  suggests  that  upon  this  side  we 
might  find  our  best  means  of  attacking  some 
of  the   other   evils    that    beset   our   neighbors. 


The  Invalid  121 

One  of  the  greatest  of  these  is  intemperance. 
Next  to  Hcentiousness  it  still  stands  as  the 
personal  habit  that  causes  most  poverty  and 
degeneration,  not  only  in  the  victim  himself 
but  in  his  offspring.  Might  we  not  attack  both 
of  these  causes  more  effectively  if  we  sought 
and  followed  the  leadership  of  courageous 
physicians  who  could  tell  the  truth  about 
alcoholism  and  licentiousness  plainly,  but  fairly 
and  dispassionately  ?  On  the  health  side  too 
we  need  many  more  facts  and  studies  as  to  the 
social  cost  of  child  labor.  We  know  that  its 
cost  to  the  individual  and  to  the  community  is 
very  heavy,  but  we  need  many  more  details 
than  we   now   have. 

Advocates  of  a  large  group  of  other  under- 
takings for  social  betterment  could  probably  find, 
in  the  present  state  of  public  sentiment,  their 
most  effective  appeal  in  emphasizing  the  relation 
of  each  to  the  public  health.  I  refer  to  the  bet- 
terment of  the  physical  welfare  of  school  chil- 
dren, the  making  of  organized  play  co-extensive 
with  our  school  system,  the  systematic  study  of 
dangerous  occupations  and  of  the  occupations  of 
married  women  and  girls,  the  better  sanitation  of 


122  The  Good  Neighbor 

factories  and  workshops,  and  the  application  of 
strict  sanitary  tests  to  newly  arrived  immigrants. 
All  of  these  have  a  very  direct  relation  to  public 
health,  and  on  this  side  the  people  are  most  will- 
ing to  listen  and  to  act. 

But  our  city  and  State  governments  have 
much  to  answer  for,  and  so  have  we  who  per- 
mit them  still  to  tamper  with  such  vital  questions 
as  the  water  and  milk  supply,  sewage  disposal, 
housing  conditions,  contagious  diseases,  and 
food  adulteration.  Whenever,  as  voters,  we 
neglect  these  questions  for  partisan  or  personal 
considerations,  we  "pass  by  on  the  other  side." 

No  one  will  undertake,  probably,  to  gather 
the  addresses  of  all  the  agencies  in  a  large  city 
for  the  relief  and  treatment  of  the  sick.  Those 
that  will  be  found  indispensable  will  be  the 
bureau  of  health,  the  larger  hospitals  and  dis- 
pensaries, the  anti-tuberculosis  society,  the 
visiting  nurses,  the  sick  diet  kitchens,  the  modi- 
fied milk  stations,  and  the  homes  for  con- 
valescents. 


IX. 

The  Contributor. 

TN  seven  successive  chapters,  we  have  fol- 
lowed the  fortunes  of  the  city  neighbors  of  the 
good  neighbor.  We  have  seen  them  as  children, 
as  toilers,  as  tenants,  we  have  seen  them  as 
vagrants  and  as  the  victims  of  unavoidable 
misfortune  and  disease.  The  good  neighbor 
himself  now  concerns  us,  first  as  the  faithful 
steward  of  the  fortune,  be  it  large  or  small, 
that  has  been  entrusted  to  his  keeping,  and  then 
as  a  member  of  some  Christian  church,  and  as 
one  pledged,  therefore,  to  a  larger  neighborli- 
ness. 

Every  genuine  advance  has  brought  with  it 
certain  drawbacks  during  the  period  of  read- 
justment. The  new  crusades  against  contagion 
made  people  unduly  timid  for  awhile  about 
contact  with  tuberculous  patients  who  were 
well-trained  in  so  caring  for  themselves  as  to 
protect  others;  this  worked  real  hardship  to 
individual    consumptives    who    were    excluded 

113 


124  The  Good  Neighbor 

from  hotels,  boarding  houses  and  workshops 
unnecessarily.  The  newer  charity  has  been 
made  an  excuse  by  those  who  seek  excuses  for 
not  giving.  It  has  brought  to  light  ten  real 
needs  that  could  be  met  effectively,  has  revealed 
ten  chances  of  giving  for  every  one  that  it  has 
shut  off,  yet  the  timid  giver  has  undoubtedly 
been  made  more  timid  by  its  habit  of  truth- 
telling. 

The  time  has  come  to  point  out  that  one  of 
the  evils  of  the  "town  period"  of  relief  was  its 
niggardliness.  People  gave  little  for  fear  of 
pauperizing  the  recipients,  and  this  little 
(usually  the  same  amount  to  each)  given  to 
many  tided  them  over  into  next  week's  misery, 
but  kept  them  in  a  state  of  wretchedness.  Large 
gifts  have  at  least  one  advantage  over  small, 
that  they  are  likely  to  have  a  greater  educational 
value.  In  giving  large  sums,  we  are  usually 
careful  to  know  beforehand  what  we  are  about, 
and  having  given,  we  are  more  likely  to  observe 
the  result.  To  spend  ^loo  in  ^1.50  or  $2 
grocery  orders,  given  at  irregular  intervals  dur- 
ing a  long  period  of  time,  is  seldom  helpful 
either  to  the  giver,  the  receiver,  or  the  inter- 


The  Contributor  125 

mediary.  There  is  a  result,  of  course,  but  it 
is  seldom  positive  and  definite.  To  spend  the 
same  sum  of  money  in  a  lump,  in  setting  some 
member  of  the  family  up  in  business  or  in  re- 
moving all  of  them  to  a  different  environment, 
or  in  securing  special  care  for  an  invalid,  is  a 
challenge  at  once  to  the  one  w^ho  gives,  the  one 
who  receives,  and  the  one  who  devises  the  plan 
and  undertakes  to  see  it  through.  It  may  fail, 
but  at  least  the  reason  for  failure  will  appear, 
and  the  experience  won  will  be  helpful  in 
future  dealings  with  the  particular  applicant 
and  with  all  others.  The  applicant  will  escape, 
too,  that  speculative  attitude,  that  waiting  for 
something  to  happen,  which  is  part  of  the 
pauper  habit  of  mind  and  the  natural  result 
of  small  doles. 

When  we  turn  from  this  direct  giving  to 
individuals  in  need — which  is  the  very  best 
kind  of  giving  so  long  as  it  is  based  upon  a 
knowledge  of  real  conditions  and  seeks  to  re- 
move the  causes  of  distress — when  we  turn 
from  the  consideration  of  the  good  neighbor's 
direct  giving,  and  think  of  him  as  a  contributor 
to  diverse  causes,  the  most  obvious  fact  is  that. 


126  The  Good  Neighbor 

whenever  his  goodness  is  at  all  well  known,  he 
is  simply  overwhelmed  with  appeals  by  cir- 
cular, by  personal  letter,  and  by  visitation 
from  collectors  paid  and  unpaid.  The  most 
unneighborly  thing  that  he  can  do  is  to  refuse 
all,  for  some  at  least  are  the  true  successors 
of  the  Samaritan  and  of  the  innkeeper.  The 
next  most  unneighborly  thing  that  he  can  do  is 
to  give  to  all,  or  to  give  and  refuse  at  random,  to 

Let  twenty  pass  and  stone  the  twenty-first. 
Loving  not,  hating  not,  just  choosing  so. 

In  this  way  he  will  hamper  good  work  by 
supporting  bad  work,  and  will  be  giving  a  new 
lease  of  life  to  the  stupid,  the  reactionary,  and 
the  actively  vicious. 

What  should  the  contributor  know  before  he 
contributes  ?  The  Chicago  Bureau  of  Charities 
suggests  the  following  list  of  questions,  answers 
to  which  may  be  taken  as  the  minimum  of  in- 
formation necessary  for  an  intelligent  decision: 

Is  this  charity  genuine  or  fraudulent } 

Does  it  meet  a  real  need  in  the  community  ? 

Is  it  well  managed  .-' 

Does  it  employ  approved  methods : 


The  Contributor  127 

Are  its  financial  affairs  conducted  in  a  business- 
like manner  ? 

Does  it  resort  to  extravagant  methods  of  rais- 
ing money  ? 

Does  it  account  properly  for  all  income  and 
expenditure  ? 

What  are  its  sources  of  income  ? 

How  much  income  does  it  require  ? 

What  commission  is  paid  to  the  agent  who 
asks  the  contribution  ? 

If  tickets  to  an  entertainment  are  offered  for 
sale,  how  large  a  proportion  of  the  proceeds  will 
actually  reach  the  charity  ? 

The  Bureau  also  offers  to  find  the  answers 
to  these  questions  about  any  charity  in  Chicago. 
A  few  other  charity  organization  societies 
furnish  confidential  reports  to  members  con- 
cerning  any   local   charity 

Commercial  agencies  have  been  organized  in 
some  cities  to  make  reports  not  only  upon  chari- 
ties but  upon  appeals  from  educational  concerns 
and  upon  advertising  schemes.  In  so  far  as  these 
agencies  attempt  to  report  upon  charities,  their 
work,  as  it  has  come  under  my  personal  observa- 
tion, is  far  from  satisfactory.  The  presence  of 
influential  names  upon  a  directorate  or  upon  an 


128  The  Good  Neighbor 

advisory  board,  for  instance,  seems  to  paralyze 
them,  though  the  most  fraudulent  of  promoters 
are  usually  able  to  secure  respectable  backing.  I 
have  known  these  reporting  agencies  to  make 
favorable  reports  about  very  doubtful  undertak- 
ings. The  tests  that  they  are  intelligent  enough 
to  apply,  moreover,  are  elementary  ;  a  charity 
might  meet  them  all  and  still  be  doing  great  harm 
to  the  poor.  It  would  seem  best,  therefore,  to 
confine  their  work  to  its  legitimate  field  of  report- 
ing upon  business  enterprises,  and  to  seek  advice 
about  charitable  undertakings  from  charitable  ex- 
perts who  are  known  to  be  both  courageous  and 
fair-minded. 

It  takes  courage  to  tell  the  truth  about 
charities  that  are  well-intentioned  but  mis- 
taken, for  good  intentions  (though  we  have 
authority  for  beheving  that  they  are  chiefly 
useful  as  paving  material)  have  yet  a  certain 
sanctity  in  our  eyes. 

Heavily  endowed  charities  that  are  inde- 
pendent of  public  opinion  and  whose  managers 
have  grown  lethargic  cannot  be  influenced  by 
the  intelligent  criticism  of  contributors,  but  all 
charities  appealing  annually  for  support  can  be 
still  further  demoralized  or  else  greatly  improved 


The  Contributor  129 

by  the  contributor's  attitude.  He  can  hold  them 
up  to  a  high  sense  of  professional  responsibility; 
he  can  show  his  contempt  for  the  charity  that 
does  more  for  the  applicant  with  a  wealthy 
patron  than  it  does  for  the  applicant  without 
such  influence;  he  can  frown  upon  large  com- 
missions to  collectors  and  upon  tickets  for 
expensive  entertainments;  he  can  discourage 
the  tendency  to  bid  for  support  by  working  for 
figures;  he  can  discover  what  proportion  of 
the  expense  is  borne  by  directors  who  are  able 
to  contribute,  and,  more  important  still,  whether 
they  really  direct  the  policy  of  the  charity  or 
are  mere  figure-heads;  he  can  ask  of  every 
hospital  or  dispensary  not  merely  the  number 
of  patients  treated,  but  the  quantity  and  quality 
of  care  given  in  each  case;  of  a  relief  society, 
not  the  number  of  tons,  pounds  or  yards  of  stuff" 
it  has  dispensed,  but  the  number  of  families 
that  it  has  made  really  better  oflF;  of  every 
charity  he  can  demand  to  know  not  so  much  the 
amount  spent  in  salaries  as  the  quality  of  work 
done  by  those  to  whom  the  salaries  are  paid. 

This  question  of  salaries  is  an  important  one. 
Considerable   sums    may    be   wasted   on    ineflR- 

9 


130  The  Good  Neighbor 

cient  employees  who  are  in  demand  nowhere 
else,  and  much  larger  sums  may  be  well  spent 
upon  those  who  serve  the  poor  with  intelli- 
gence and  devotion.  When  we  pay  to  provide 
the  poor  with  a  district  nurse,  we  do  not  say 
that  we  are  spending  our  money  on  salaries  pro- 
vided the  nurse  is  a  good  one,  we  say  we 
are  spending  money  on  the  poor.  When  a 
society  has  anything  to  do  with  relief  work, 
contributors  immediately  begin  to  figure  the 
cost  of  "giving  away  a  dollar,"  and  will  charge 
against  that  dollar  the  cost  of  every  other 
task  that  it  undertakes,  from  the  rescue  of  work- 
ing children  and  the  punishment  of  wife  deserters 
up  to  the  most  difficult  remedial  measures. 

When  people  manufacture  shoes,  do  they 
charge  up  the  cost  of  all  the  labor  that  goes  into 
their  making  to  the  administration  account  ? 
What  is  spent  in  the  office  of  a  charitable 
society  on  a  bookkeeper,  on  a  collector,  on 
office  rent,  on  gas,  on  heat,  should  be  charged 
to  the  administration  account;  but  what  is 
spent  on  the  labor  of  devoted  men  and  women 
who  give  their  lives  to  mending  the  broken  for- 
tunes of  the  needy,  doing  for  them  every  con- 


The  Contributor  131 

ceivable  service  from  the  lowliest  to  the  highest, 
surely  to  charge  all  that  against  the  cost  of 
"giving  away  a  dollar"  is  to  do  a  very  stupid 
thing.  And  yet  people  are  guilty  of  it  every- 
where, and  everpvhere  does  the  plain  state- 
ment of  work  done  serve  as  the  best  defense. 


During  a  secretary's  first  year  in  charge  of  a 
large  charity  organization  society,  some  of  her 
directors,  fearing  that  she  might  be  a  bit  of  a 
fanatic,  urged  upon  her  the  importance  of  seeing 
that  the  poor  were  kept  warm  and  had  enough  to 
eat  in  winter,  for  that  was,  after  all,  the  most 
important  thing. 

But  two  or  three  years  later,  when  one  of 
these  same  directors  read  a  record  that  she  showed 
him  of  a  poor  tuberculous  woman  who,  with 
her  little  boy,  had  lived  in  a  wretched  lodging 
and  received  a  seventy -five  cent  grocery  order 
every  week  from  a  relief  society,  he  acquired  a 
new  set  of  convictions.  All  references  in  an- 
other city  proved  false,  but  the  charity  agent  hap- 
pened to  ask  the  boy  what  school  he  had  attended 
there,  and  this  one  clue  had  brought  out  a  most  in- 
teresting and  strange  story  of  a  well-to-do  home, 
a  feeble-minded  daughter  wandering  away  from  it 


132  The  Good  Neighbor 

with  her  one  child  six  months  before,  tuberculosis 
contracted  by  exposure  and  lack  of  food,  and  a  vain 
search  for  her  in  many  cities;  finally — forty-eight 
hours  after  the  inquiry — the  daughter  was  re-estab- 
lished at  home  with  a  trained  nurse,  the  boy  was 
back  in  school,  and  the  ugly,  distorted  conditions 
of  their  two  lives  were  righted.  Which  was 
better,  the  grocery  order  or  the  adequate  care  ? 
A  few  weeks  after  reading  this  record,  the 
director  was  told  by  an  acquaintance  that  his 
society  spent  too  much  money  on  salaries  and  not 
enough  on  relief.  The  remark  made  him  rather 
warm,  and  he  retorted  with  vigor  that  the  kind 
of  service  that  this  agent  had  rendered  was  just 
the  thing  of  all  others  that  the  poor  needed,  and 
that  such  service  was  in  no  wise  inconsistent  with 
adequate  relief;  that  strangely  enough  the  cham- 
pions of  merely  feeding  and  warming  people  and 
doing  nothing  more  for  them  had  never  done  even 
that  adequately,  and  that  it  had  remained  for 
societies  such  as  his  to  raise  and  spend  large  sums 
on  individual  cases. 

The  advance  in  really  helpful  benevolence 
has  been  so  great,  and  opportunities  for  the 
useful  expenditure  of  money  are  now  so  plenti- 
ful— expenditures    paying    dividends    in    better 


The  Contributor  133 

health,  better  morals,  better  earning  power, 
better  citizens — that  the  encouragement  of 
fraudulent  and  mistaken  charity  by  careless 
givers  is  more  inexcusably  careless  now  than 
it  ever  was  before. 

But  every  new  form  of  effective  philan- 
thropy has  its  fraudulent  imitations.  One  such, 
claiming  to  be  a  national  crusade  against  tuber- 
culosis, was  engineered  recently  by  a  mere 
adventurer  who  knew  how  to  get  up  attractive 
circulars.  He  obtained  the  backing  of  a  man 
of  science,  of  the  wife  of  a  bishop,  of  a  promi- 
nent physician,  and  of  many  others,  collected 
several  thousand  dollars  and  then  moved  out 
in  the  night  to  avoid  paying  office  rent.  One 
very  disgraceful  concern,  claiming  to  support 
day  nurseries  in  several  cities  by  the  sale  of  a 
paper,  still  operates  through  its  canvassers  in 
the  business  sections  of  some  of  our  large  cities 
despite  repeated  exposures.  The  evidence  re- 
quired in  false  pretense  cases  is  such  that  it  is 
very  difficult  to  secure  the  conviction  of  this 
type  of  criminal. 

The  contributor  should  also  be  on  his  fjuard 
against  self-appointed  missionaries,  founders  of 


134  The  Good  Neighbor 

charities  who  are  their  chief  executive  officers, 
and  professional  promoters.  The  self-appointed 
missionary  and  almoner,  who  makes  a  practice 
of  soliciting  and  dispensing  the  alms  of  others, 
may  be  honest,  but  often  he  is  not,  and  there 
is  no  possible  check  upon  his  operations.  He 
is  placed  in  the  awkward  position,  moreover, 
of  having  to  put  a  valuation  upon  his  own  ser- 
vices. Founders  of  charities  who  select  a  board 
of  directors  who  in  turn  go  through  the  form  of 
selecting  the  founder  for  superintendent,  chief 
executive  officer  and  financier,  are  also  placed 
in  an  awkward  position,  and  the  institution  so 
organized  will  sometimes  bear  watching.  "  Pro- 
fessional promoters"  are  those  who  make  a 
business  of  getting  up  entertainments  for  the 
benefit  of  charities.  Well-dressed  women,  some- 
times passing  for  directors  or  friends  of  a  certain 
charity,  go  to  business  houses  and  homes  to 
sell  tickets.  No  check  upon  sales  is  possible, 
and  very  unscrupulous  men  and  women  have 
been  employed  in  this  business.  Two  rules  will 
protect  the  contributor:  Never  buy  tickets  for 
charitable  entertainments  except  from  those 
personally  known  to  you.     Threaten  to  with- 


The  Contributor  135 

draw  support  from  any  charity  that  authorizes 
professional  promoters  to  trade  upon  its  name. 

He  who  seeks  wise  counsel  before  giving  and 
who  follows  up  the  result  sympathetically  after 
giving  can  double  the  pleasure  of  his  gift.  He 
can  quadruple  it  by  becoming  actively  interested 
in  some  good  cause.  I  know  few  happier  people 
than  those  who  spend  their  money  liberally  in 
furthering  some  benevolent  object  with  which 
they  are  personally  identified,  and  who  follow 
this  up  by  spending  their  time  liberally  in  mak- 
ing the  gift  effective.  But  it  is  not  always 
possible  to  command  the  free  use  of  one's  time 
and  money  both  together,  so  that  gift  by  will 
must  still  remain  a  favorite  way  of  rendering 
neighborly  and  helpful  service. 

Testators  are  usually  actuated  by  the  best  of 
motives,  but  still  they  can  do  harm,  or  their 
gift  can  cease  to  do  good  as  circumstances 
change.  In  England,  the  classic  instance  is 
Betton's  bequest  of  ;;^22,ooo  for  the  redemption 
of  British  slaves  in  Turkey  and  Barbary.  The 
wisest  in  our  day  will  be  rash  if  they  assume 
that  they  can  forecast  the   future   better  than 


136  The  Good  Neighbor 

Betton  did.  The  capture  of  British  sailors  off 
the  Barbary  coast  ceased  many  years  ago,  and 
other  social  changes  quite  as  great  and  greater 
are  sure  in  the  future  to  make  our  present 
testamentary  endeavors   seem  foolish. 

A  citizen  of  Philadelphia  in  the  borough  of 
Southwark,  who  was  a  member  of  the  American 
or  Know  Nothing  party,  died  in  1 849  leaving 
enough  money  to  purchase  about  1450  tons  of 
coal  annually.  This  was  to  be  distributed  to 
widows  "born  within  the  limits  of  the  United 
States  of  America  whose  husbands  shall  have 
died  within  the  present  defined  boundaries  of  the 
district  of  Southwark."  But  Southwark  has 
now  become  the  center  of  Philadelphia's  foreign 
population,  and  widows  whose  husbands  have 
died  there  in  recent  years  have  not  usually  been 
born  in  this  country.  In  another  twenty  years 
it  may  become  impossible  to  fulfil  the  conditions 
of  this  trust,  although  the  gift  is  a  pure  dole  and 
widows  in  good  circumstances  may  and  do  claim 
their  share. 

The  remedy  for  these  evils  is  in  the  testator's 
hands.  Beyond  a  period  of  twenty-five  years 
the  intelligent  giver  will  not  impose  rigid  condi- 


The  Contributor  137 

tions,  he  will  understand  that  if  he  is  competent 
to  frame  a  bequest  wisely  for  this  generation  and 
the  beginning  of  the  next,  his  representatives  in 
future  times  will  also  be  wise  enough,  probably, 
to  adapt  it  to  changed  circumstances. 

In  another  class  belong  the  bequests  that 
were  ill-advised  from  the  beginning,  such  as 
those  to  create  new  institutions  where  institu- 
tions already  existing  were  doing  their  work 
well  but  needed  further  support.  Our  cities 
become  burdened  with  too  many  small  and 
inadequately  supported  charities  for  the  ac- 
complishment of  the  same  set  of  objects.  It 
is  well  to  consult  the  published  directories  of 
charities  before  deciding  on  the  creation  of  any 
new  agency;  it  is  better  still  to  consult  some 
person  who  knows  the  city's  resources  thor- 
oughly. In  most  American  cities,  two  classes 
are  still  very  inadequately  provided  for,  the  aged 
poor  and  convalescents.  The  better  endowment 
of  existing  homes  and  the  creation  of  new  ones 
for  both  of  these  classes  of  dependents  is  needed. 

Many  donors  have  a  long  list  of  charities  to 
which  they  are  in  the  habit  of  giving  a  fixed 
sum  annually.    If  the  list  is  made  out  with  care 


138  The  Good  Neighbor 

and  revised  frequently,  to  make  sure  that  the 
present  management  of  each  charity  on  the 
list  is  meeting  present  needs,  this  is  an  excellent 
plan.  One  practice  of  the  charitable  giver 
needs  amendment,  and  that  is  the  habit  of 
giving  the  same  sum  to  everything;  the  amount 
given  should  bear  some  proportion  to  the  ser- 
vice rendered.  It  Is  not  quite  fair  to  give  $2^ 
annually  to  a  little  shelter  that  cares  very  in- 
adequately for  sixty  transients  a  year,  and  the 
same  amount  to  the  largest  unendov^ed  charity 
in  the  city. 

After  all  these  cautions  have  been  duly  set 
dov^^n,  however,  the  great  fact  about  giving  is 
that  we  double  our  riches  by  sharing  them,  and 
the  rediscovery  of  this  truth,  running  parallel 
as  it  does  with  the  greed  for  acquisition  which 
also  characterizes  our  times,  Is  the  most  en- 
couraging single  fact  in  the  story  of  twentieth 
century  neighborliness. 


X 

The  Church  Member. 

ARRIVED  at  the  last  stage  in  this  superficial 
■-   survey  of  charity  on  its  neighborly  side,  I 
am  forcibly    reminded  of  one  who  was  called 
from  this  earth  some  years  ago,  but  whose  min- 
istry in  a  large  city  church  still  remains  an  in- 
spiration to  many.    His  creed  and  mine  differed 
widely   and   I   seldom   heard   him   preach,    but 
there   was   no    public   task   with   which    I   was 
associated  that  did   not  show  the  influence  of 
his  daily  endeavor  to  apply  the  Gospel  of  Christ 
to  the  life  of  the  city  in  which  we  both  worked. 
The  city's  great  network,  with  its  tangles  here, 
its  gaps  there,  its  complex  of  relations,  political, 
educational,    industrial,    social— this    huge    net 
and    its    motley    contents    he    saw   largely    and 
sanely,  but  with  an  intense  compassion  for  the 
spiritually    undernourished    that    were    caught 
within  its  mesh. 

Some  clergymen  who  feel  this  "call  of  the 
city"   fling  themselves   unselfishly  into  its  life, 

'39 


140  The  Good  Neighbor 

but  dissipate  their  strength  by  becoming  di- 
rectors of  many  boards,  attending  many  meet- 
ings, and  making  many  addresses  on  a  great 
variety  of  topics.  This  was  not  his  way.  Hav- 
ing in  mind  always  that  the  exercise  and  develop- 
ment of  the  members  of  his  own  congregation 
in  the  Christian  life  was  his  highest  duty,  he 
set  himself  the  task  of  studying  first  the  needs 
of  the  city  in  which  they  lived;  then  the  possi- 
bilities both  social  and  spiritual  of  the  many 
agencies  created  to  meet  these  needs;  and  last, 
the  aptitudes  and  capacities  of  his  people. 
The  city  was  their  workshop,  and  into  it  he  fed 
them  freely,  associating  them  with  every  up- 
lifting work  that  was  going  forward.  Some 
of  his  men  visited  prisons  and  became  volunteer 
probation  officers  in  charge  of  individual  boys, 
others  founded  an  equitable  loan  company  for 
the  poorer  sort  of  borrowers,  and  many  worked 
hard  in  municipal  campaigns.  The  women  of 
his  church  visited  families  in  distress  under  the 
best  guidance  that  he  was  able  to  secure  for 
them,  and  gave  efficient  aid  on  hospital  com- 
mittees and  in  children's  work. 

The    church    had    no    group    of    charitable 


The  Church  Member  141 

buildings,  no  new  charities  to  which  it  could 
point  with  pride;  it  was  the  city  as  a  whole 
that  bore  eloquent  witness  to  the  power  of  his 
preaching.  But  in  however  many  places  out- 
side church  boundaries  his  people  may  have 
made  that  power  felt,  all  the  work  that  they  did 
was  religious  work;  they  always  so  regarded  it, 
and  their  first  loyalty  was  always  to  their 
church  and  its  leader.  Sometimes  it  seemed  to 
me,  an  onlooker,  that  he  played  upon  the  com- 
munity as  upon  a  great  organ,  drawing  from  it 
new  and  inspiring  spiritual  harmonies. 

This  is  not  the  only  way  in  which  a  church 
may  illustrate  in  the  lives  of  its  people  the  para- 
ble of  the  Samaritan;  there  are  many  ways, 
of  course,  varying  with  the  capacities  of  clergy- 
men and  of  congregations,  but  this  one  way 
gave  a  whole  denomination  new  dignity  in  the 
eyes  of  those  who  saw  the  far-reaching  results. 

Consider  for  a  moment  a  different  church 
situation.  A  young  clergyman  is  called  to  a 
well-established  city  church  in  which  there  are 
many  charitable  activities,  including  a  ladies' 
relief  society.  He  has  high  ideals  of  what  a 
church    should    be    and    do.      Denominational 


142  The  Good  Neighbor 

rivalries  seem  to  him  petty;  to  start  an  orphan- 
age or  a  diet  kitchen  or  a  mothers'  meeting 
because  the  Baptists  or  the  Presbyterians  have 
started  one  in  the  same  field  is,  in  his  opinion, 
hopelessly  to  confuse  the  church's  true  aim. 
What  are  some  of  the  hindrances  to  the  work 
of  such  a  minister  ?  In  the  first  place,  he  must 
overcome  the  inertia  of  the  men  and  women  in 
his  own  congregation.  The  natural  selfishness 
of  the  human  heart  is  best  overcome  by  en- 
couraging every  little  flickering  flame  of  desire 
to  do  good  to  others,  and  charitable  activities 
assume  a  new  importance  in  his  eyes  when, 
having  shaken  his  people  out  of  their  smaller 
selves  by  his  preaching  of  the  Gospel,  he  real- 
izes the  necessity  of  giving  them  ample  oppor- 
tunity for  the  exercise  of  a  newly  awakened 
impulse. 

He  turns  to  the  relief  society  and  other  chari- 
ties of  his  church,  and  here,  more  often  than  not, 
is  the  beginning  of  his  troubles.  Our  minister 
is  a  busy  man.  He  is  generous  of  his  time  and 
sympathy.  In  addition  to  the  exacting  duties 
of  his  church  services,  the  sick,  the  tempted, 
and  the  stricken  of  his  flock  make  heavy  de- 


The  Church  Member  143 

mands  upon  him.  It  is  not  humanly  possible 
for  him  to  guide  each  stumbling  beginner  in 
charity  to  solid  ground,  and  soon  he  discovers 
that,  in  the  absence  of  experienced  leadership, 
the  benevolent  intentions  of  his  good  people  are 
being  exercised  at  the  expense  of  the  church's 
poor  or,  too  often,  of  some  other  church's  poor, 
who  are  growing  more  and  more  dependent; 
instead  of  having  heart  put  into  them  for  the 
struggle  ot  life,  they  are  becoming  less  willing 
to  struggle  at  all.  He  becomes  sick  at  heart 
as  he  sees  the  results  of  that  promiscuous  dos- 
ing of  social  diseases  which  passes  in  his  church 
for  charity. 

It  is  unnecessary  to  tell  the  stories  of  children 
seven  times  baptized  in  other  churches,  of  rent 
paid  five  times  over,  of  Protestant  fuel  and 
Catholic  groceries  supplied,  while  the  family 
earnings  go  in  drink  and  in  Sunday  picnics. 
The  waste  of  money  and  of  time  would  be  a 
small  matter,  if  so  many  helpful  ways  of  deal- 
ing with  these  same  families  were  not  set  aside, 
and  if  the  moral  effect  on  his  own  people  and 
on  the  poor  were  not  so  bad.  Each  has  a  dis- 
torted view  of  the  other,  and  these  unnatural 


144  The  Good  Neighbor 

relations  of  the  dependent  poor  to  careless 
givers  have  gone  on  so  long  that  any  sane  and 
right  relation  is  difficult  to  establish.  On  one 
point  he  is  clear:  He  knows  that  his  people 
will  never  win  Heaven  by  making  other  human 
beings  less  human.  The  problem  given  him 
is  how  to  turn  this  desire  to  do  good,  this  initial 
charitable  impulse,  which  is  so  hopeful  an 
impulse  in  itself,  into  useful  channels. 

Do  I  exaggerate  the  difficulty .?  Many 
churches  are  fortunate  enough  to  have  in  their 
membership,  or  else  to  secure,  workers  who  are 
familiar  with  living  conditions  among  the  poor 
in  the  modern  city,  and  who  are  able  to  give 
the  time  to  teach  beginners  in  the  church's 
charitable  activities  to  do  their  work  thoroughly 
and  well.  But  lacking  such  aids  (and  many 
churches  do  lack  them)  our  clergyman  should 
be  able  to  find  among  the  city's  charitable 
societies  and  institutions  a  sympathetic  under- 
standing of  his  needs  and  a  willingness  to  meet 
them.  Too  often  he  will  find  instead  a  short- 
sighted devotion  to  their  own  aims.  But  from 
those  charities  to  which  he  decides  to  detail 
some   of  his    parishioners    for   experience    and 


The  Church  Member  145 

training  he  has  a  right  to  demand  knowledge 
and  skill  in  charitable  work,  and  complete 
indifference  as  to  who  gets  the  credit,  the 
church  or  the  charity,  so  long  as  the  work  is 
well  done.  If  workers  who  have  been  sent 
from  the  church  to  engage  in  school  visiting 
under  the  public  education  association,  or  in 
institution  visiting  under  a  hospital  superin- 
tendent, or  in  family  visiting  under  the  charity 
organization  society,  or  in  club  work  under 
a  settlement,  become  very  efficient  and  yet 
leave  to  take  the  leadership  in  some  church 
work,  the  charity  that  loses  them  should  count 
it  clear  gain  if  they  are  continuing  to  do  good 
work  elsewhere. 

In  the  relation  between  the  church  and  the 
secular  charities,  the  church  should  not  be 
expected  to  do  all  the  giving,  though  she  should 
learn  to  interpret  the  term  "religious  work" 
broadly.  The  church  supplies  the  motive;  the 
charities  should  supply  the  method.  Some- 
times, in  her  absorption  in  even  more  impor- 
tant tasks,  the  church  has  failed  to  accumulate 
and  systematize  the  experience  that  is  now 
available  about  social  diseases  and  their  cure. 
10 


146  The  Good  Neighbor 

But  method  and  motive  have  need  of  each 
other.  Any  assumption  of  a  monopoly  of 
wisdom  on  the  part  of  the  secular  charitable 
agencies  is  absurd — as  though  the  city's  water- 
pipes  and  reservoirs  should  grow  vain  and  think 
themselves  the  sources  of  supply!  For  centu- 
ries charity  has  looked  to  the  church  and  must 
continue  to  look  to  it  as  the  uncontaminated 
spring  in  the  hills,  the  source  of  its  power. 
The  church,  on  the  other  hand,  will  find  the 
charitable  agencies — those  described  in  this 
book,  for  instance — a  modern  convenience,  if 
no  more. 

There  is  a  development  in  charitable  work 
that  it  has  often  cheered  me  in  times  of  depres- 
sion to  dwell  upon,  but  I  mention  it  here  because 
it  bears  a  close  relation  to  the  development  of 
church  work.  Let  us  stand  aside,  for  a  moment, 
and  strive  to  see  the  forces  of  our  civilization 
forever  remoulding  the  objects  and  methods 
of  charity. 

Looked  at  in  the  large,  the  process  seems  to 
show  a  perpetual  inflowing  on  the  one  side  of 
new  interests  and  new  aims,  and  on  the  other  a 


The  Church  Member  147 

perpetual  absorption  of  whole  groups  of  chari- 
table activities  back  into  the  community  life. 
To  take  one  illustration  out  of  many:  Our 
charitable  concern  for  children  satisfied  itself? 
at  one  time,  by  establishing  foundling  asylums, 
orphanages  and  charity  day  schools.  The 
schools  met  so  vital  a  need  that  they  were  ab- 
sorbed into  the  normal  life  of  the  community 
and  became  a  part  of  greater  educational 
systems,  all  of  which  had  been  of  charitable 
origin.  But  no  sooner  had  charity  relinquished 
control  of  our  schools  than  we  find  her  discover- 
ing new  needs  and  annexing  new  territory — 
the  protection  of  children  from  cruelty;  their 
care  in  private  families  and  in  kindergartens; 
their  physical  training  and  welfare;  their 
protection  from  premature  employment.  And 
these  new  objects  or  a  part  of  them  will,  in  time, 
be  reabsorbed  into  the  daily  life  of  the  whole 
people.  Savings  banks,  in  another  depart- 
ment of  charitable  work,  began  as  charities, 
but  have  been  so  completely  absorbed  that  few 
know  their  origin  as  a  part  of  Hamburg's 
relief  system;  hospitals  have  been  partly  ab- 
sorbed;   and  a  host  of  other  useful  institutions 


148  The  Good  Neighbor 

illustrate  in  their  development  this  same  process. 
So  that  we  find  charity  occupying  a  shifting 
ground — forever  exploring,  annexing,  and  re- 
linquishing. 

The  church  member,  as  he  watches  this 
movement,  so  full  of  promise  for  humanity, 
will  often  be  puzzled  to  fix  the  exact  relation  of 
the  Christian  church  to  the  process.  The 
relation  cannot  be  clearly  defined  indeed;  no 
one  should  attempt  to  dogmatize  about  it,  no 
one  can  prophesy  how  far  the  secularization  of 
charity  may  go,  or  how  soon  it  may  be  checked 
by  a  reaction  in  favor  of  church  control.  In 
certain  fields  requiring  concerted  action  on  a 
large  scale,  denominational  diflPerences  stand 
stubbornly  in  the  way  of  a  reaction.  It  would 
not  be  possible,  for  instance,  to  secure  within 
church  lines  the  needed  compactness  of  organi- 
zation for  an  effective  crusade  against  child 
labor,  or  tuberculosis,  or  bad  housing;  and  yet 
no  one  of  these  campaigns  can  succeed  without 
the  sympathy  of  the  church. 

Is  not  this  question  of  the  relation  of  charity 
to  the  church  a  part  of  a  larger  question  ?  Do 
we  not   discover,   in  the  church   itself,  though 


The  Church  Member  149 

upon  a  far  grander  and  more  impressive  scale, 
the  same  process  of  exploration,  annexation  and 
relinquishment  that  we  have  noted  in  charity  ? 
The  priests  of  old  were  the  first  physicians,  the 
prophets  were  the  first  statesmen,  the  religious 
teachers  were  the  conservators  of  learning 
through  ages  that  would  have  been  dark  indeed 
but  for  the  flame  that  they  nourished.  And 
yet,  one  by  one,  wholly  or  in  part,  the  church 
has  relinquished  control  of  these  functions  of 
healing  and  governing  and  teaching.  Few  will 
question  that  her  spiritual  life  has  been  strength- 
ened thereby. 

And  what  of  the  relinquished  activities  ? 
What  of  medicine,  statecraft,  education  ? — how 
have  they  prospered  ?  Speaking  for  our  own 
country  alone  and  more  especially  for  its  cities, 
their  growth  reveals  some  great  lacks,  and  the 
greatest  of  these  is  the  lack  of  spiritual  power. 
The  time  seems  ripe — and  here  and  there 
religious  leaders  are  realizing  it  and  rising  to 
the  opportunity — not  for  a  return  of  the  church 
to  the  old  control,  but  for  a  return  to  these 
secularizxd  fields  of  endeavor  through  the  path- 
way of  service. 


150  The  Good  Neighbor 

What  we  win  through  authority,  we  lose; 
what  we  win  through  influence,  the  influence 
of  understanding  and  caring,  we  keep.  Every 
now  and  again  one  has  a  vision  of  the  church 
moving  forward  in  this  way  to  larger  achieve- 
ments, annexing  no  temporal  kingdom  this 
time  but  a  spiritual  kingdom,  winning  the 
minds  and  hearts  of  men  the  world  over  through 
a  larger,  a  more  inclusive  neighborliness,  which 
shall  break  down,  in  the  field  of  social  service 
at  least,  the  old  division  between  religious  and 
secular. 

I  have  said  that  there  are  spiritual  lacks  in 
medicine  and  statecraft  and  education.  The 
wisest  of  our  doctors  are  beginning  to  realize 
that,  before  they  can  succeed  in  the  treatment 
of  a  large  group  of  diseases,  they  must  win  a 
larger  social  and  spiritual  outlook.  Politics 
in  our  large  cities — can  we  doubt  it  ? — needs 
religion  far  more  than  it  needs  any  other  one 
thing. 

We  are  dodging  the  issue  of  religious  instruc- 
tion in  our  schools;  denominational  difi^erences 
make  its  solution  difficult.  But  nowhere  could 
the  church  do  a  larger  work  of  neighborliness 


The  Church  Member  151 

than  in  fostering  a  deeper  interest  in  the  condi- 
tion of  school  children.* 

And  in  so  far  as  charity  has  been  secularized, 
there  too — in  what  is  coming  to  be  so  important 
and  formative  an  influence  in  our  large  cities 
— we  need  the  quickening  of  the  religious  spirit, 
we  need  the  more  active  participation  of  church 
people.  Turning  over  the  pages  of  the  more 
recent  books  on  social  work,  one  is  saddened 
to  find  how  largely  it  is  taken  for  granted  that 
things  are  to  be  made  better  by  legislation  and 
by  generous  expenditures  of  money,  by  these 
two  things  alone.  "Just  because  it  is  impor- 
tant," says  Rev.  Clement  Rogers,  "for  Christians 
who  diflfer  fundamentally  on  points  of  doctrine 
to  keep  rigidly  separate  in  matters  of  worship 
and  religious  organization,  it  is  important  that 
they  should  co-operate  on  the  neutral  ground 


*  A  friend  sends  me  this  quotation  from  Bishop  Westcott  : 
'»  With  the  schoolmasters,  I  believe,  more  than  with  the  clergy, 
rests  the  shaping  of  that  generation  which  will  decide  in  a  large 
degree  what  the  England  of  the  future  will  be, — turbulent,  divided, 
self-indulgent,  materialized,  or  quickened  with  a  power  of  spiritual 
sympathy,  striving  toward  a  realization  of  a  national  ideal,  touched 
already  with  that  spirit  of  sacrifice  which  regards  every  gift  of  for- 
tune and  place  and  character  as  held  for  the  common  good." 


152  The  Good  Neighbor 

of  social  work,  and  on  every  occasion  where 
no  principle  is  sacrificed  by  so  doing."  This 
from  the  side  of  the  church,  but  the  social  work 
itself  needs  that  spiritual  quality  which  devoted 
church  members  and  they  alone  can  bring  into  it. 

When  Christ,  replying  to  the  lawyer,  gave 
that  perfect  picture  of  neighborliness  in  which 
"each  phrase  is  a  separate  gem,"  He  addressed 
himself  not  merely  to  answering  the  question, 
evasively  asked,  of  Who  is  my  neighbor  ?  He 
had  in  mind  the  first  and  wider  question  of 
What  shall  I  do  to  inherit  eternal  life  ?  Thus 
did  He  relate  the  humblest  duties  of  our  daily 
life  to  the  deepest  need  of  the  spirit.  Only 
half  of  the  law  is  fulfilled  in  love  to  God,  and 
"he  that  loveth  not  his  brother  whom  he  hath 
seen,  how  can  he  love  God  whom  he  hath  not 
seen  ? " 


Addresses,  Hours,  and  Telephone  Numbers 
OF  THE  Local  Charities  Recommended 
IN  this  Book  for  the  Use  of  the  Good 
Neighbor, 


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